I had half a tooth pulled the other day and it was not an entirely pleasant experience. Luckily I like my dentist very much and having him grope around in my mouth with various sized pliers trying to grab the rotten piece of the old crown wasn't as bad as it might have been. The crown had been put in my jaw 25 years ago and after 45 minutes struggling it finally yielded and slipped out of my jaw. "That was a bit 19th century" I remarked as we eyed the broken stump, a half inch long sliver of bone with the old dead nerve still inside and living flesh still clinging to the stump. "That is amazing" the dentist remarked,his eyes flashing with excitement. "Look at that," he breathed to his assistant, "a very old style crown." He was like a boy who had just amputated wings from a fly. I was feeling no pain thanks to half a dozen shots of Novocain, but my tongue was having trouble staying out of my gullet, I felt as though I were trying to swallow a dead fish and that made it hard to breathe. I sat up lest I drown in my own blood. "Hmm," I said staring at the Rosetta stone of modern dentistry, "Every time I get toothache I'm glad I live in modern times."
I read somewhere that ancient Egyptian mummies have been found to suffer from ground down teeth owing to the surfeit of desert sand blown into their diet accidentally. "I think I'd like to have been a barber," my dentist confided to me as we waited for the Novocain to take effect. "All that blood letting and teeth pulling. Of course people ate less sugar back then," he looked saddened by the thought of less dental work. After 16 years you'd think he'd be sick of it. Not at all. I'm pretty sure he bounces out of bed in the morning and can't wait to board his scooter for the ride to work.
We chatted for a while, of course talking about the economy and we compared notes on people we know losing their homes to foreclosure. It was a long list. "Well," he said philosophically. "He took a few years off and had some good times, but the bank is telling him to drop the price below half a million, and he paid nine hundred thousand for it." He looked glum for a moment. "I took two years off to go sailing and a couple more farting around, " I replied, a little indistinct thanks to the drugs, "but that sure wouldn't make up for losing my home..." a thought to ponder as I laid back and he went to work on round one of the protracted tooth extraction.
As he struggled with the recalcitrant tooth the dentist kept asking me if I was okay. "Fine," I mumbled, "it's just freaking me out imagining what you are doing." "Don't think about it," he commanded as pressed on with a fresh pair of needle nosed pliers. So I thought about this instead: We're lucky to live our lives in this modern era, and I don't want it to change too much. I have no idea why I was born into the middle class first world life, but I like it very much, I like cheap oil. I like having choices and I like having free time. I don't even mind riding to see the dentists from tiem to time. Getting a tooth pulled is no fun, but modern medecine makes it bearable, and heaven knows when something more serious or more painful comes along we haven't got the tools available to "Bones" of
Star Trek fame but things are a lot better than they were. Even when I was a kid dentistry hurt, and it hurt a lot. Nowadays they don't use laughing gas anymore which I enjoyed when that original crown was put in my mouth, and I miss it, but it's nice to have a dentist that does stint the Novocain. I wonder what the pain relief for Economic Recession tastes like? A dead fish sliding down your throat perhaps?
I had half a tooth pulled the other day and it was not an entirely pleasant experience. Luckily I like my dentist very much and having him grope around in my mouth with various sized pliers trying to grab the rotten piece of the old crown wasn't as bad as it might have been. The crown had been put in my jaw 25 years ago and after 45 minutes struggling it finally yielded and slipped out of my jaw. "That was a bit 19th century" I remarked as we eyed the broken stump, a half inch long sliver of bone with the old dead nerve still inside and living flesh still clinging to the stump. "That is amazing" the dentist remarked,his eyes flashing with excitement. "Look at that," he breathed to his assistant, "a very old style crown." He was like a boy who had just amputated wings from a fly. I was feeling no pain thanks to half a dozen shots of Novocain, but my tongue was having trouble staying out of my gullet, I felt as though I were trying to swallow a dead fish and that made it hard to breathe. I sat up lest I drown in my own blood. "Hmm," I said staring at the Rosetta stone of modern dentistry, "Every time I get toothache I'm glad I live in modern times."