Scary Things Pointed at My Head

Went to my bi-annual dentist appointment today. I had a sinking feeling throughout the day before my visit that this would be the time that all the warnings of, "We'll have to keep on an eye out on that next time," would finally catch up with me. I feared horrendous issues. Dates with drills and other sharp, scary things.

Turns out that my teeth were just fine, thank you. Things seemed to be so good, as a matter of fact, that I didn't get the usual warnings about my bad oral habits. I was shocked, to be honest.

But, there was one bump in the road. My hygenist informed me that it had been five years since my last set of full oral x-rays. She also explained that they had moved to a new computer based x-ray system. "It's easier because I don't have to develop x-rays anymore," she said happily, before noting, "But taking the x-rays is a bit harder."

This caught my attention, since the travails of x-ray development had been hidden from me, but, by golly, the actual taking part involved me and my poor little mouth.

She brought out what looked a bit like the usual apparatus: a metal bar with a large plastic loop on the not me end that was used for aiming the x-ray cannon. (I call it x-ray cannon because that's what it looks like when it's pointed at my head.) On the business end, where once had been a simple little piece of x-ray film, was a hunk of plastic with a rather intimidating cable protruding and running to a computer. It was about to be my joy to bite down on this sucker eighteen times.

First was the lead flak jacket for my chest (and more importantly, my genitals). After that was thudded into place, my first command to bite down was given, and with that uncomfortable hunk of plastic in my mouth and the x-ray cannon pointed at my head (my chest is protected, but what about my brain?), she ran from the room to pull the trigger.

I have a pretty strong gag reflex, so this exercise in painful repetition required a force of will on my part. Beyond that, for a couple of the x-rays, it hurt pretty ******* bad.

In case you're wondering, the word replaced by ******* is "fucking."

Now, this would all have been perfectly awful enough, except for one exciting twist. When I'm in a painful, awkward situation, I tend to giggle. Giggling is not the best way to go about having oral x-rays taken. It potentially messes up the x-rays, which can lead to more cannon fire, and more melted brain cells. I'm pretty sure I read that somewhere. Or my good friend and fellow blogger MommyDoc may have told me that.

Anyhoo, another symptom of giggling in the dentists office is you look pretty silly (or sexy and macho, at least that's what I tell myself). Based on the exasperation of my hygenist/sadist, I'll have to bet on silly. Perhaps it was the simple fact that she had been looking forward to torturing the poor sap that need the full x-rays to end her day, and here he was, laughing. I guess that's like hours of foreplay not only not leading to an orgasm, but resulting in an anti-orgasm where your genitals explode. Needless to say, she was not pleased with my inability to suffer properly.

After the last x-ray, I had the urge to proclaim, "That was the oral equivalent of a prostate exam!" In a rare moment of self censorhip, I did not.

The rest of the exam was unremarkable. Just the usual insufferable pain caused by sharp, pointy things digging into my gums under some pretense of dental health. Then the cameo by the actual dentist to pull at my lips as if I was Mr. Ed before patting me on the head and assuring that everything was just fine, scooter! (Okay, there was no patting of the head and the word scooter was not used, but it sure felt that way.)

So with the good news of no impending oral doom and a throbbing mouth, I made my escape, never to have to go back. Until January 5th. Fuck.