I have had a difficult day.
Actually I am still having a difficult day.
I have been to the dentist.
I am scared of the dentist.
I try not to be because it is a ridiculous thing in this modern anaesthetised time, but all the same it is scary. Once I started to get old all of my gums started to disappear, and now I have got bony teeth which plunge down into my mouth for miles, like a horse. This is all very well but means that cold air and cold water make me wince and grumble. Frosty mornings make smiling impossible.
When even a smile hurts you are not terribly enthusiastic about being poked with steel things and having cold air and water sprayed all over your mouth.
All the same, I knew I had a hurting bit in a corner of my mouth and so I went.
I was perfectly brave in the waiting room, which was a good start. I took my library book and even remembered my glasses, and sat there trying very hard not to think about it. This lasted right up until the moment when the lady in the blue scrubs turned up and shouted my name.
She had a world-weary look about her, the sort that you might expect to be covered in blood and shattered fragments of dead teeth, although obviously she wasn’t. She had put a clean plastic apron on in between patients.
I followed her nervously up the stairs and lowered myself timidly into the terrible chair.
I think I need a filling, I explained. I booked a long appointment specially.
No you haven’t, the dentist contradicted. You just get ten minutes like everybody else.
I was flummoxed.
But I did, I pleaded. I can’t possibly screw up this amount of courage twice.
I will have a look, said the dentist, and she did, poking and blowing icy air over my poor teeth until I was filled with miserable self pity.
When she emerged she nodded.
You need a filling, she said. I will do it now and we will see if it works. If it doesn’t you will have to have either a root canal or an extraction but not today because we have only got a few minutes left.
I was so desperate not to have a root canal or an extraction that I was overcome with gratitude, and nodded dumbly.
Then she set to work.
She gave me two injections, the second after the first one did not work. Or rather, it worked a bit, just not very much.
Then she set about my mouth with her horrible buzzy tools.
In fact it was done in almost no time at all, and she sat back and told me that it was over, and that I would have to try the filling to see if it would stop the hurting, and come back if it didn’t.
Then I tottered out.
I was shaking so much I could hardly walk down the stairs, and getting back through the village was very wobbly indeed, but I made it home and collapsed at my desk.
I could not even have a cup of tea because you can’t after a filling.
My mouth has stayed splutteringly numb ever since. It was more than three hours ago now, and I am still mumbling and dribbling. Oliver called to tell me about his current adventures, he has been learning about Attachment Theory, and I do not think he could understand a word I was saying. I sounded like Eliza Doolittle trying to talk through the mouthful of pebbles to say With Blackest Moss The Flower Pots Were Thickly Crusted.
Tiresomely, although my mouth is still numb, it is itching like mad. I can’t scratch through the numbness to get to the itch, and it is infuriating.
LATER NOTE: I gave up there and came out to work, where I am pleased to announce that the numbness has now been replaced by aching. My mouth feels as though I have been the arresting policeman at a campsite full of irate gypsies
All the same it seems as if it has worked, because I ate a whole raw carrot on that side of my mouth without flinching even once.
Perhaps, on the whole, it has been a jolly good day.
