2006apr20. I went in to the dentist’s office today to get a cavity filled. Sony’s My First Cavity®. Plus half of something they’re calling a “deep cleaning.”
“That’s also called 'scaling,’ right?”
”Yes.”
“They called it ‘deep cleaning’ because 'scaling’ sounds kind of creepy, right?”
[uneasy professional laughter]
You get scaled – I mean deep cleaned – when you don’t go to the dentist in a long time. A really long time. That’s what check-ups are all about, they need to explain this in much more dire terms, I think. I sort of lost track of this millennium, what with my work at the orphanage and the two years with the WNBA. I thought it was going to be much more harsh, they just use water pressure to clean your teeth below the gum line. At least, that’s the way it felt/sounded/etc, I kept my eyes closed the whole time – dentists don’t need their patients looking at them. So if the procedure is something different, like twenty steak knives or some other horror show, don’t email me with the “solution.” I’d rather remain thinking it’s water, because I’ve got another appointment to go in for the other half.
And even though it’s local anaesthetic, when it was time to get up and pay I felt really disoriented – I think it’s because my brain was so busy trying to figure out what was happening during the procedure. “Ooooh ... strawberry? They flavor the local? Weirdos.” The two locals needed for deep cleaning were administered in a more “mellow” fashion than the five to seven locals I got ten years ago for wisdom teeth removal. Not like needles going into your gum, more like someone rubbing it.
Right now my teeth are still numb, so I’m poking around in there for self-amusement. It’s fun, when you rub up against your cheek it’s like your sense of touch is approximating where your teeth are.