![SP-Aug10-09b [Dreaming in the Key of E]](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2499/3809892960_60e6cd201c.jpg)
so…i cried almost the whole bike ride home. i’d like to blame it on the song playing, i will follow you into the dark, but i don’t think that was it. maybe it was shame. or maybe there are stored energies in my tooth that came free, although my tooth didn’t. or rather, i didn’t go through with it. pumped to the eyeballs with novacaine, i felt nothing. and the dentist, a young guy with kind eyes was digging around the tooth and “loosening” it, not that i could feel it but the thought…the idea of it, the memory of having my tooth crunched out of my head as a child, the suctioning of blood or whatever was flowing…it doesn’t matter. my body always does it in response to injury (and even to my tattoos and nipple piercings) and it did it again. sweat flow, blood draining, silent screaming buzz filling my brain and i begin to black out. i made them stop and my whole body was twitching oddly, cold and wet from sweat, my respiration all jacked up and i was huffing and sweating and retched once or twice…they backed off. they were kind…gave me choices. and i opted out of the realtime tooth dig and got referred to an oral surgeon who will knock me out and pull it. i had hoped to be rid of this jagged glass feel, these spikes rising up out of my gum, i hoped to be done with that today. as i got dressed and left, the dentist and his assistant looked caring but crestfallen, almost as if they had failed instead of me.
i’m not a western pioneer, i’m not a settler on the ranch with a bottle of whiskey and a string on my tooth, i’m not a man who casually grunts as he sews up his own skin with twine to fix his wounds, i’m a dreaming fool with a supersensitive skin, a big messy heart and a smile of shattered shards and i failed at being brave today.
I don’t know many that are brave hearts in a dentist chair. I’d much rather know big messy hearts with super sensitive skin who fearlessly challenge the world ;)
:) thank you.
what you are, my dear, is a man who had a reaction to the epinephrine that was administered along with the anesthetic. It’s in there to reduce bleeding, but it also has other effects and THAT is what you were feeling.
i appreciate that, my friend. it was a horrible, horrible day.
when i think back to it….i’m not sure they were just “crestfallen.” when ir emember back…it was as if they were scared. i think i freaked them out. they are used to extracting teeth all the time. its a low budget clinic, funded. i dont think they expected that from me.