Toothache

Toothache.  Bad.

I am in so much agony I can barely think. It's not my vault, (sorry - that should be 'fault'.  It's just very difficult to concentrate when you are in this much bain.)

Of course it's much worse for me, because I have a very high pain threshold, so when MY tooth does hurt - it is so much worse than everybody else's toothache.  Much, much worse. Honestly.
 
Mrs Ed isn't interested.  She says I am a wimp and that I cry about every little intsy wincy bit of discomfort that comes my way.  Sure, like the discomfort of having a member of the Russian Netball squad jumping her pogo-stick along my gumline, is that the sort of 'mild pain' she's talking about?…. I tell you it is so SORE! And it's no use even contemplating asking her for any sympathy.  So much for 'in sickness and in health', when I mentioned that the agony is worse than child-birth she said it actually was just like having a baby in the house again, because the neighbours had started complaining about all the late night screaming and crying.

The worrying thing is that I heard her tell her sister that if I didn't sort myself out she would remove my tooth herself.  Actually I think she would enjoy that sort of thing. Really.  REALLY!  I can just picture her sitting on my chest with a plumber's vicegrip fastened on my tooth, gum-booted size 12 feet bracing against my chin as she leans back and pulls with all the joy and might she can muster.   AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH! That's the stuff Stephen king books are made of.

What is it about toothache?  It's like, like, like my mouth has developed four million extra pain sensors overnight, so I feel EVERYTHING!  I writhe in agony when a truck drives past.  Or when a door slams across the road.  Yesterday a seagull dropped its feather on the ground near me and it felt like I'd bitten a lightbulb….  So you can imagine the pain I felt when I woke up at three this morning because someone was jabbing a torch and pair of pliers in my mouth and rummaging around under my tongue (yep! Mrs Ed again.  “Sorry, I thought you were asleep!”)

How did it get so bad?  I really don't know.  And before you start pointing fingers, I  promise I go to the dentist regularly, I honestly do. 

Don't you believe me?  Let's define regular : 'At fixed intervals' my Oxford Concise Dictionary said when I checked yesterday.  Well actually I think there's a longer definition too, but my eyes were still watering in pain from when Mrs Ed clomped the heavy book down on the table right next to my elbow, with which I was gingerly supporting my aching jaw, (I swear she does it on purpose).  So 'at fixed intervals' is what I'm going with. And yes, I can safely say that I go regularly to the dentist….

That is every eight years. Like clockwork. Yes sirree, Bob, I can look back in history and say I'm as regular in dentist visits as the next guy.  2004 was the last time I went, and before that 1996, then 1988…. And so on.  I know, I know, some people go a bit more often than that - but they don't have the 'Complicated History' that I have, do they?

Let me explain.  When I was fourteen my dentist (of the time) put metal across my entire top row of  teeth - sort of railway track metal.  That was when things were normal and people generally didn't actually like having metal in their mouths.   Nowadays it seems EVERY TEEN gets metal-mouthed and it's considered very cool. In fact poor kids draw metal tracks onto their teeth in pencil, or use paper clips and staples, so they too can look cool. 

But back then I endured six months of being teased and taunted, not to mention the occurrence of the most-embarrassing-37-minutes-of-my-life  which were spent 'locked on' to a certain girl at a certain party (it was a kissing game called spin the bottle, and she had only chosen me out of panic, hoping I wouldn't tease HER about HER newly railway tracked teeth). (If only the paramedic had arrived with his wire-cutters BEFORE her parents).

Then at the duly appointed time my mother dragged me back to the dentist for the 'check up'.  After pushing me into his consulting room (using a cattle-prod if my memory serves correctly) she waited outside as usual - something about the screaming hurting her ears (my voice hadn't broken yet).  Sitting in The Chair of Doom, I stared up the dentist's nostrils and focused all my supernatural powers on his brain, hoping I might be able to just seize it up, somehow.  It didn't work. 

“Aha!” the elderly practitioner of pain said, as he deftly removed the 27metres of forged steel from my upper jaw.
“Hmmm, hmm,” he surmised as he carefully held my mouthy metalwork up to the light, (I marveled at his upper-body strength!)  I waited with bated breath.  Well, perhaps not bated -  more a blend of iron and fluoride.  I silently prayed that he would not find anything embarrassingly icky lurking amongst the hinges and pulleys and plates. 

Thankfully, prior to the visit, my mother had insisted that I sit dead still in front of her so that she could remove any traces of food-matter lodged in the brace, as well as the small bit of foreign wire from afore mentioned lass… (I was quite sad to see that go, as I had considered it as somewhat of a trophy, a 'notch in the old brace wire' you might say.)
 
But he wasn't looking for anything worth photographing for his 'Torturers' Weekly' column.  In fact, in hindsight, I think he was thinking more along the lines of making  another payment on his private yacht.
Before striding out (possibly to call his stock-market adviser) he arbitrarily grunted in my direction:
“Needs adjusting.  Leave it with me.  I will refit it at the next appointment.”

Somehow I didn't book that appointment.  In fact I'm sorry to say, I waited until the old fellow died before I returned to the orthodontic world. 

You see right up until I was 22  (when, at last, the tooth man's grave was given a filling)  I firmly believed that my setting foot in any dentist's rooms would set off alarms and sirens, triggering 'lock down' on all exits. Then, whilst the staff held me down, the cob-webbed old  dentist would stride into the room, armed with my long-ago adjusted wire tracks, and ram them onto my teeth, sans anesthetic.
“I told you I would adjust them!” he would cackle, “Whoo hoo ha ha ha ha!”

But once he had popped off to where-ever dentists pop off to, I felt safe.  And back I went  for the historic 2nd of my regular, eight year dental check ups. 

And so I have continued this trend, most faithfully I believe.

So you see, I have indeed established myself as a regular-dentist-visit sort of person… so why must I be made to suffer so?  Clearly I haven't been avoiding the issue? 2012 is definitely the year of the dentist (despite what the Chinese tell you of the dragon) and I fully intend to go….

But it's only February… I was thinking October/ Novemberish would have been perfect.  You see, by then I would certainly have saved up enough money, I'm sure. (I was planning on starting a little fund at the end of this month)…. 
But now my plans are undone.  My tooth is hurting like a hippo with bunions and my wallet is as empty as a politician’s promise.  So I find myself asking   How do you ask a dentist to give you a 'recession check-up'? Is there such a thing as oral 'triage'?
“Just get the real bad ones doc,  I'll brush the semi-rotten, chipped and discoloured guys back to full health before my next visit, I promise!” 

And I would.... considering the next appointment would only be February2020…