by Debbie Wilson

For me a trip to the dentist is somewhat like preparing for a real trip. It always involves a lot of preparation and additional pre-trips to various health care providers.   It was one foggy Christmas Eve when Santa and the Tooth Fairy co-mingled to bring me a dreaded travel package deal.  It happened Christmas Eve 2006 when a crown disengaged itself from the front of my mouth.  Have you ever tried to find working dentists on Christmas Eve?  Forget it! They are off in the North Pole with wanna be dentist elves celebrating the holidays.  Having to face family and friends at forty-something with a front tooth missing isn’t as cute as it was when you were 5 and it is the wrong season for the tooth fairy.   

A dentist was finally located as well as a dental surgeon for a root canal on December 27^th.  The trip to the surgeon should have involved some relaxation medication but unfortunately for all, it didn’t.  A mere two weeks later, another trip for another root canal, but this time the dental surgeon had insisted on relaxation medication for me or he wouldn’t even walk in the room.  That trip, and many others, involved someone to drive me home, even for routine procedures.  It seemed that my trips to the dentist started to also involve a trip to the pharmacy.  Nice, free vacations of the mind soon followed.  I would look at my handsome dentist and think of him as the tour operator for the gondola ride I was about to take in Venice. The dental hygienist became the hostess at a fancy New York restaurant.  The snag (not of the tooth but in my fantasy) would come when the drilling started.  It is always the drilling that derails any trip, but especially one to the dentist. Just the sound was enough to send shock waves of reality through me.  Whiiiirrrrrr and then the tour guide/dentist would say, “This won’t hurt”. Well, of course it wasn’t going to hurt him and so what if I was numb from my eyebrows to my neck, I could still feel that drill bit! “ Relax” he said, and I think, “Someday buddy, I will be on the other end of that drill and then we will see who is telling whom to relax!”

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