Kedar says..

I recently found myself sitting in a high chair, under some huge floodlights.. I remember my life was flashing by in front of my eyes.. the fun times, the food, ice creams, chocolates, BBQ parties.. the smiles, memories.. my entire life.. and I was thinking how everyone else must be happily going about their business while I was preparing myself, .. for a dentist! I was sitting in this comfortable looking chair that had two thousand different positions and adjustments to make me presentable to this dentist!

Honestly, a dentist is my least favorite type of doctor… not that I have a favorite type.. But just imagine, you are sitting there with your mouth open and someone is drilling into your teeth, pulling them out and you can’t do anything about it.. it just feels straight out of some horror movie to me..! Anyways, my dentist was a nice young lady – smiling and all, and had an even nicer looking young assistant. But unfortunately this wasn’t the right place or the right situation to appreciate that fact….!!

They started getting ready.. You know how they wear a mask, the gloves, and the apron – so this way the patient can’t even take any revenge on them, for all the torture they are putting us through.. you can’t spray them with the saliva and dirt this way! The assistant, in the meanwhile, was gathering all kinds of dangerous tools near me.. With both parties ready in their own way like that, the ordeal started..

First they have to justify this torture.. so they gave me a mirror to see how dirty “the machine” had become.. I get it alright? - I don’t need any more convincing. I am not running away from here, just yet.. Just get on with it!

“.. okayyy, we need to clean your teeth first..” I heard the dentist say.. I could almost imagine all those sharp tools competing to get into my mouth and carve into and between my teeth.. going after the leftovers of delicacies I had so thoroughly enjoyed all this time.. They started carving, scraping, and lugging at my teeth and sometimes I felt as if my teeth would just give up and pop right out with those leftovers! My jaw was almost dropping with pain and fatigue..

“Don’t close your mouth, You need to Open wwwide!!“.. the dentist’s order brought me out of that trance of helplessness.. I mean, it’s never enough for the dentist, is it? – they want you to open your mouth big, and even bigger..! Part of my brain ordered the muscles in my mouth to comply.. and it continued.. on and on.. somewhere a nerve got surprised and took me to new levels of pain..! Surprisingly, the dentist felt a surge of sympathy, she used her vacuum to clean out the mess and gave me a few moments to relax.. but somehow my mouth had forgotten the instructions to close itself!! The muscles had developed a temporary memory of that “wide open” state! I lost track of time… and finally woke up in front of the same mirror – with the dentist, proudly showing her work to me! All white, all clean.. I managed a wry weary smile..

If you are one of those fortunate people who get away with just this much in life, you should thank your lucky stars.. But those of us who have had to suffer a tooth filling, a tooth extraction, a root canal or more, deserve the utmost pity! I faced the ultimate in human torture tools – the much dreaded dentist’s drill, the unusually looonnng needles of the anesthetic injection, the tooth extracting forceps, the bone cutters and more – during my ordeal that lasted many more hours and visits, and left me scarred – both dentally and mentally!

Have you seen a mechanic repairing a car..? You know how he opens the hood and keeps it open on a support rod… it’s the same with the dentist.. he puts a block in your mouth to keep it open, there is a suction pump hanging by the side of your mouth to keep the place dry, and now this area belongs to him!.. he drills, polishes, vacuums, sprays water to clean his “work area”, he even goes for a walk keeping “that hood” open!

It’s amazing how such situations completely break you down.. your style, your fashionable self… I had my iPhone, my nice coat, a great shirt and cowboy jeans on me.. but I couldn’t erase that picture of me, open mouthed with all that mess! I was actually smiling about my train of thoughts when they were drilling into my teeth.. I am sure they must have found it surprising to see their patient smiling through the torture……..!!

This entry was posted on Friday, March 5th, 2010 at 2:13 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.