I am quirky; this my friends know. I have an affinity for the dentist’s office, hospitals, and needles. I don’t mind blood draws, I think hospitals smell nice, and I have a tendency to fall asleep while getting my teeth cleaned. I can’t help it, I am just stressed out enough and just enough of a hausfrau martyr that the only way I can relax is through forced confinement. Hospital stays are the only vacations I get from my kids, and the dentist’s chair, these days, is the closest I will get to a spa.

It helps that my dentist is funny. He and his assistant have a good rappor and they do a good job of helping their patients feel at ease. Like today I had a conversation with the good doc and Brittany the hygienist (only slightly complicated by the fact that there were several instruments in my mouth) about subsidized tattoo removal, Obama’s decision not to issue stimulus checks, the raise the other hygienist wasn’t going to get, and the benefits of pleading out to a second count of speeding and paying an extortionary fine versus gaining an additional 2-pts. on the license. I argued for simply not speeding, of course, which at least made everyone laugh.

I like the dentist; I have never had a bad experience with one. I did push myself to the limit today, however, as I was scheduled for a root canal.

Besides being mentally quirky, I am also physically quirky. I am well-known for having odd reactions to medications. While just a little caffeine can send me to the moon, it takes enough novocaine to fell an elephant in order to get and keep my jaw numb. Every procedure I have had that required anesthetic has been a song and dance of “does this hurt? How ’bout now? Now? What about now?” and today was to be no exception.

It was, however, to be slightly more excruciating. I am a baby when it comes to nerve pain. I’ve had two children by c-section and by far the worst part of the experience was not being flayed open and de-stuffed but that needle in the back that they give for the spinal block. I don’t even mind needles! I do, however, mind blinding, shooting nerve pain. Call me quirky.

Nerve pain is, of course, the central part of any tooth ache and dental procedure. I’m not scared of drilling because drilling makes the pain go away. I’ve had good luck with dental procedures in the past. When I had my wisdom teeth extracted, they were impacted: My mouth was already so swollen and tender that when they removed the teeth, the swelling actually RECEDED and I found relief rather than a doubling of pain.

I fully expected that to be the case today; I’ve been unable to chew on that side of my mouth for months, waiting for something to give so I could go back to my dentist and demonstrate exactly which tooth had gone south. At our last meeting, I could prove I was in pain, but couldn’t show which tooth was the culprit and we had to wait and see. I was actually excited when the dentist said he was ordering a root canal because it meant there was finally progress and the sore tooth would be fixed.

Everything I had read said that modern root canals were generally no more painful than getting a filling and for the most part, this is correct. However, we have already established that I have an inhuman tolerance for novocaine and that mostly means that in a deep procedure involving roots and nerves, you find out at inconvenient moments that you’re not actually numb everywhere you should be. These are “interesting” moments.

After the first shot of novocaine, it became clear that I was still not sufficiently numb to complete the procedure. After fiddling around with my tooth and playing the Verizon game of dentistry, the dentist gave me an additional shot of novocaine. Then he started drilling. I was sat in the chair, trying to ignore the smoke and burnt smell being emitted from my mouth. When the good doc set aside his drill, he picked up what appeared to be the world’s tiniest rasp, hollowing out the root canal of my tooth. I’m guessing that is what he was doing, it’s hard to see inside your own mouth. My mouth is wide open, his hand is inside my mouth and he is gently sawing up and down with this pin sized tooth file (or whatever it is, I’m not a dentist) when LO and BEHOLD, yeah there’s a nerve down there and he popped it.

I don’t know who was more surprised…me at the sharp, searing pain that shot through my lower jaw, or the good dentist whose hand I bit and tray I almost sent flying with my reflexive warding off action with my hands. Thank goodness for Brittany’s fast hands because otherwise he’d have been picking tiny-ass tooth files out of his retinas.

More novocaine. I could still feel him sawing away, but it was a bearable tickling of the nerve and short-lived. When he was done, they cleaned the canals with “irrigation.” They “irrigate” the tooth, which must be dental-ese for “pouring bleach into a tiny hole in your mouth.” It didn’t hurt, but I swear, my mouth smelled like a swimming pool (at least it was an improvement over the burnt hair smell it had formerly emitted). Why do drilled teeth smell like burnt hair anyway?

Hours later, the numbness has worn off, the tooth is packed with some sort of medicine and temporary filling, and in two weeks I get my post and crown. In the meantime, I am coping with a vague throbbing caused by five pokes with a needle in my mouth and a failed attempt to manage a taco shell with dinner (not recommended). Ibuprofen is saving the day.

That was my interesting moment of the day. I still don’t mind the dentist, but I will tell you, I am definitely minded to be a little more aggressive with my flossing program and more diligent about wearing my bite guard because I don’t really fancy doing that shit ever again.