I settled myself into a reclined padded seat, and she took out something that, from the corner of my eyes, looked very suspicious. OMG, please, no, NOOOOOO!!!! And I thought I was going to die, right there and then.
What I wrote above is not an excerpt from some lunatic-horror-movie. That, I thought, was what going to happen. Well, I paid a visit to the dentist last Sunday - an extra-curricular activity that one should be doing once or several times a year (see…I don‘t even know how often it’s supposed to be done), which I had been putting off since I graduated from High School. I am not really afraid of the dentist. I have just been too busy from school and work that I didn’t notice I had been ignoring my teeth. Good thing going to the dentist at least once a year was a school requirement when I was in High School. Buti na lang. @_@
And so last week - I finally felt something that I never felt since I was in grade school. I got toothache. Pretty embarrassing because I had to absent myself from work. Come on, how can one with a toothache concentrate at work?
My dentist was a petite woman, cute, in her twenties. She was maybe my age. I wanted to back out when I learned that it was going to be a young lady dentist. I am not discriminating the lady dentist (though I really believe that men are always better than women, haha). It was just that, the thought of drooling and spitting and crying in agony in front of a kinda-cute lady was a definite minus-pogi-points.
And so, she asked me to settle myself into the reclined seat, and soon she was cleaning and probing and poking my teeth nonchalantly. For some reason, the tube that was supposed to suck the water from my mouth was not doing what its job was. The dentist didn’t realize it, so while she was busy examining my teeth - I called her attention and pointed at my mouth, and said “Madami na pong tubig, doc”, although it sounded like “Mmmmarghgh ggkkkggkkk qqookk”. But being a highly trained professional that she was, she understood what I said perfectly. “Oooops, don’t swallow”, she said. But she was nano-second late. I accidentally, thus unwillingly, swallowed a portion of the water building inside my mouth (gross). And so she asked me to spit the water and gargle - something that she should have asked me to do before I was forced to swallow. Eek.
“Ay, muntik mo ng maubos ung tubig ah, may tira pa oh, hehehe…” the dentist said, trying to make a joke out of it. Yeah - right.
I am not really a gentleman by nature, but since I need her help, and I find her kinda-cute, I just smiled - though I made it obvious that I was not happy about it. It took her a minute or two to fix the water-sucking- machine. Then she went back with the cleaning and probing and poking my teeth until she came to a certain tooth, at the right-upper back region of my mouth, which had been giving me trouble for a week. Then I heard her say, tsk tsk tsk…something you never want to hear from anyone, especially from a dentist.
“Kailangan nating pastahan ‘to, at tatlong surface ang cover nitong sirang ngipin sa taas. Allowed ng apat ang card mo per year.”
Ah, ok - I said. “Go ahead doc, let‘s do this and be done with it.” I said.
And so I settled back in my padded seat and prepared for the real battle, and she started preparing some metal tools that I had not seen for a decade.
“This might hurt a little”, she said - then started working on it. The feeling was extraordinarily...painful. I felt her drilling in my tooth, reaching and hitting the nerves….and ooohhh… Ouch (times 10 times 10 times 10)!!! Then I passed out.
All is good after an hour. Thank goodness.
Well, with my experience with the dentist, I must say I learned something from it: that getting a toothache is really a humbling experience. I mean, you could be the President of the Philippines, or the richest man in the world, but when you have a rotten teeth…there’s no escape…you’re going to feel the pain whether you like it or not.
Now I wonder, when will my next dental appointment be? Maybe after another 10 years from now. Teee heee! XD
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