Thursday, June 19, 2008

Open That Hole!

Early this morning found me climbing into a chair at the Dental clinic. Along with a host of other phobias and fears, my paralyzing fear of dentists evaporated after I got sober. Which is good. What's bad is I'm paying the price for years and years of neglect when it comes to my teeth. As I tried to get myself back together with medication, both prescribed and not, I did manage an occasional dental appointment in the last two years. I even had a minor cleaning done at one point, but balked when they tried to convince me that a deep cleaning would be advisable and not horribly painful. Truth to tell, I doubt I would have been able to sit still with someone directly over me using sharp instruments inside my mouth for more than a few minutes without running down the hall with the spit-sucker still attached.

So I guess the little bit of work I already had done saved me a bit of discomfort, but last month I decided I would take advantage of the 8 free visits I have with ADAP this year and buckle down and have my teeth fixed up. I had two visits for a light cleaning, x-rays and some evaluations, and I'll use four more to have my teeth scraped. Which is exactly what it sounds like.

This morning I had several kind of painful shots of anesthetic along my upper right gum line, and after I was good and numb, the dental technician took a rusty garden rake, opened up my face, and scraped all the dirt off from the inside. OK. That's a slight exaggeration. But it wasn't very much fun. And it took forever. I haven't had to hold my mouth open that long since I filmed Boriqua Gang-Bang Pt. 4. And for that I got paid. After I complete this procedure I'll have a filling done, by some miracle I only ended up with one small cavity through all this, and then they will try and convince me to have that previously discussed root canal. I may go back on the pills for that one. I'm fearless now not crazy.

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