Tuesday, September 11, 2007, posted by Q6 at 8:29 PM
My dentist appointment tomorrow isn't something to fear--I'm actually looking forward to it. But it was not always so.

A couple years back I started going to the dentist again after what I liked to think of as twelve years off. I hadn't been since early college, and although I experienced low-grade pain very infrequently, I brushed (at least) twice daily and everything seemed to stay where it was supposed to. In truth, I feared the pain as well as the ignominy of someone crawling around in my mouth; later on, I feared the lectures and disappointment from those licensed to crawl around in my mouth. (The same vanity made me two years late for my first prostate exam, but that's a story for another time.) One solitary Frito® later, one of my rear molars shattered into pieces so small that I must have swallowed them. With nothing but a stump left back there, and experiencing a new definition of pain with each intake of breath, I visited a friend's dentist and allowed my insurance to cover a conversation that ended with the words "root canal." (I know how my mom used to describe root canal, but times must have changed--this procedure fixed the problem, and the pain never came. I wonder if she lied about the valley-of-death experience of my birth as well?)

Tomorrow's appointment was supposed to be for a cleaning; instead, it will be to correct whatever is making my lower left jaw feel like it's about to split in two. (I would like to thank the kind people at Tylenol™ for their assistance these last two days . . . )