You'll be pleased to know, after my last missive about this, that I do not have any sort of condition that's going to make all of my teeth fall out. Phew!
What I did have, it turns out, is a loose crown.
Can I just put it out there, first of all, that I take really good care of my teeth? I do. It just so happens that I have been blessed with an "unbalanced PH" in my mouth (this is what my mother tells me. Though she is also the person who assured me as a teenager that I would eventually be tall, like all the other women in my family). Anyhooo...I get cavities really easily, is what I'm saying. Thankfully not in years have I had a full-fledged cavity (though that's also how long its been since I last went to the dentist), but the last round of work I had done involved several (yes, several) root canals and crowns. One of which, lovely bugger, had come loose.
After letting it sort of wiggle around in my mouth the last couple weeks, the pain and annoyance got to be too much to bear, so I moved my dentist appointment up a couple weeks and was in the chair this Tuesday for the big event.
This dentist I found, as I said in my last post, is lovely. He's this sweet young Indian guy, who works there dentist-ing away with his dad, who has had the business for years. He's friendly, he remembers my name and my teeth, and he makes me feel like he knows what he's doing. His assistant, who looks like she's about 17 and who kept grimmacing every time she put the little suction thing-y in my mouth because she kept suctioning my lips and cheek...did not make me feel so much that way. But, okay.
We had decided, my lovely dentist and I, that "while we were in there" (ugh) he would not only replace the crown, but go ahead and replace some old fillings as well. Why not? It'll be a little party right there in my upper right mouth. Hooray!
Have I mentioned that I hate having dental work done? Have I mentioned that I had to take a few deep breaths in the car before I could even make myself take the long walk across the parking lot into the office? Have I mentioned that my mouth doesn't open very wide so going to the dentist always makes my jaw ache? Have I mentioned that the whole thing, the weird horror-movie chair and the terrible music and the smell of, uh, sickly sweet something and the office-park blinds on the windows, how it all makes me feel vaguely ill? And how the fact that I usually know enough about what they're doing in my mouth to be very nervous, but not actually enough to keep my imagination from running wild?
Right, there's that.
So, needless to say, I had to institute some serious deep-breathing for my little dental adventure. I believe the dentist, who knows I'm a yoga teacher, actually said as we were getting ready to begin, "Alright, time to get your meditation on."
So I focused on the slats of trees through the blinds, and not the nervous hovering assistant. I focused on relaxing my hands every time I felt them clenching up into little balls of "god please let this novocaine be good" terror. And I tried to breathe. And then tried to breathe again. And so on.
And as I was laying there, my mouth achingly open, just trying with all my might to stay present to the whole room, and not just to my upsetting narrative about my buzzing teeth, I thought about how life can feel this way sometimes. How there are these moments in life when there is nothing to be done...where you've let the problem, the little nagging ache get big enough that now there's no choice but to turn it over to a professional...and so what do you do? Life is just like, open your mouth please, and keep it open until I'm done. I'm going to be sticking some saws and drills and stuff in there, and you can either sit still and make it easy, or you can freak out, and make it a lot worse.
And I thought about how often, in those times when I am being drilled or cut open or forced to sit with something uncomfortable in my day to day life, how I just (I mean let's just call a spade a spade) freak the fuck out. And that if I handled the dentist the way I handled those things...my god, he would have to strap me down.
So why is it that in the dentist chair I know? Why is it that there I can say, alright sweetie...just breathe. It will pass. And I listen to myself. And maybe I come in and I come out, but I know, somewhere somehow, that this uncomfortable (painful) experience is an opportunity for me to sit with. To breathe in the face of. To open, to stretch just a little bit wider.
But be it a nagging THOUGHT, instead of a trip to the dentist, and this same, alright sweetie...just breathe, it will pass, gets met with a big ol' NO IT WILL NOT!! I am never going to feel better and I need to fix this right now, I need to get myself the hell out of this chair!!
Imagine if you went to the dentist and had a hysterical meltdown because some part of you actually thought you were going to be in the dentist's chair FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. That would, I think, make you a crazy person. But this happens with emotions, with thoughts, all the time.
(Please tell me I'm not alone in this...)
But here's what I learned, Shanti-towners...I went to the dentist on Tuesday, I left that same day, and while my gums are still recovering from all the action they got, by and large, the experience is over. Done. Better. Fixed. And I'm sort of thinking, next time I'm faced with something I like about as much as I like my teeth getting drilled, I'm going to try--in the words of my lovely dentist--to get my meditation on.
