The right side of my face is numb. It’s a vast improvement since Monday’s horrific tragedy at Virginia Tech when my whole body was uncomfortably numb.
This morning, I’m numb from my dentist’s sadistic glee at giving me a deep cleaning. Though she’s an attractive woman, I can only see Laurence Olivier’s character, Dr. Christian Szell, from the movie The Marathon Man.
You're creepin' me out, lady
I have a drool bucket hanging around my neck and I must drink water with my head tilted to the left side. My puffy face and cocked cranium make me look like some low-life thug who was messed up with a baseball bat for bending the big man’s daughter over the hood of his Bentley – even if she was my moll. Maybe I’ll spend a little extra time and care on brushing and flossing, now, and stop with these capo di tutti capi daydreams. I blame the novocaine.
After some bad experiences with dentists in my early teens, I’ve not been a good boy about seeking their professional care for most of my life. Having grown up in Appalachia, I never really thought I was lacking anything, at the time, but my parents were either too poor to provide proper dental care or it was a low priority.
Perhaps this was due to conditioning from their own childhood – up a coal mine holler in some backwoods part of West Virginia – when having a good pair of shoes rivaled a mouthful of sparkling teeth near the top of the list of things considered coal camp necessities. The company store had shoes, but a good dentist was a little harder to come by.
The minerals in the water, there, made my front teeth turn a tad yellow when I was little, which always made me a bit self-conscious, later. I don’t remember being taken to the dentist until I was in my early teens and, by then, the damage had been done. In my early visits to the first Dr. Szell’s Little Shop of Horrors, I had sixteen cavities filled and five back molars removed on both sides of my lower jaw. Ouch. Dentists suck.
Rarely have I had dental insurance and, for most of my adult life, my finances barely allowed me food, much less the means to ensure I could still chew it. Fear and low funds usually meant that I frowned upon dental care, which always took a back seat on the bus that was barreling towards a tomorrow filled with plastic smiles, if I didn’t change my priorities. Like father like son is not always a good thing.
My dad had all of his upper teeth removed while he was still in his early 30’s. I assume this was simply due to his own poor dental hygiene. Recently, he had the rest removed and now uses full dentures. Though my teeth have outlasted my father’s, I have little to smile about as I look in the mirror and my bank account and realize the cost of poor dental care, over all these years, has added up to a painful realization: Don’t put off a little pain, today, for tomorrow you may be in a world of hurt.
I’ve decided to put my money where my mouth is. Now, I truly know what this means.
Mostly, people compliment my smile, but it’s when you get closer and start probing and picking that you can see the wear and tear, the neglect and the accumulated damage caused by my own hand. Trying to avoid going to the dentist, I brushed too hard for years before I realized that I had worn away the enamel along the gumline, causing great sensitivity. So, when someone calls me insensitive, I just smile and say, “Not really.”
During my early years in the military, Uncle Sugar’s dentist warned me of not having a partial plate made for those gaps in my teeth on the bottom in the back, saying that the upper teeth would drop down and cause headaches, heartaches and Malaysian apple rot. I thought he was just a young quack newb, green behind the ears and fresh out of dental school, who wanted to practice on me. I smiled and declined his kind offer, which would have been free on the all expenses paid Patriot Plan. Today, 25 years later, in order to properly fix my error in judgment, it will cost several thousand dollars.
Hindsight is 20/20, but at what cost? Foresight is priceless. My poor sight is a story for another day. Let’s stick to the teeth. Hmm, perhaps not.
Nothing in life is free, including advice. If I only knew then, what I know, now, I’d made a different choice. How many things in my life deserve that assessment? Life is short and I don’t care to waste time crying over spilt milk, but I’d certainly like a little chocolate to toss in the rest of the jug to make the present medicine taste more pleasant. Of course, that may rot out the rest of my teeth, if I’m not careful.
These days, I use a soft bristle brush and floss after every bite. It annoys my lunch companions, but they don’t have to pay my dental bill and I doubt they’ll be there at the old animal shelter to chew The Kat’s food for him, either. My dentist is making the many needed repairs as quickly as my dental coverage and bank account will allow, but you can only squeeze so much water from a stone.
The good thing about my dental bill is that I don’t have nearly enough money to get these repairs done and buy food, at the same time. Therefore, with new priorities – and a fabulous diet plan – I’m eating less. This should mean fewer pounds and fewer cavities, right? However, the bad thing about my dental bill is that I now don’t have the money to take an attractive dentist out to dinner, even if I wanted to.
Thankfully, she is happily married, so I can breathe easier as long as she’s not scraping the calcium deposits from below my gumline, which is very sexy, by the way. Also, it’s easier to picture her as some insane Nazi torturer, who just wants to drill holes through my teeth, when I know she’s unavailable. Right?
Of course, she’s seen what the inside of my mouth looks like, so even if she was single there’s no danger of her ever desiring to kiss that. Yuck. One would think that, if you don’t eat as much, then you won’t need to floss as much. Something tells me I may have chunky saliva, so I’d better keep the mint green kite string in the medicine cabinet, for now.
Remember kids, brush after every meal – gently – for two minutes. Floss regularly. See your dentist and heed their advice, because a healthy smile is something to smile about. I’ve come to realize that good oral hygiene is a habit I should really sink my teeth into while I still have teeth to sink.
Besides, whoever heard of a Kat without any bite!
The Kat
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