Being Eight

Whenever I have to have serious dental work done, I feel as if I'm an eight year old kid again about to be scolded.  Even when I reluctantly admit to myself that it's mostly not my fault - does anyone floss as well as dentists would like? - I still dread it.

Right now I have two things coming up. Turns out that the reason I've felt strange around one tooth is that a huge filling is about to pop out; the dentist wants to cap it, which sounds right to me - even though I remember that that was how all of my problems with my upper teeth started; one day its just a cap on one tooth, then the thing comes off twice (once over a three day holiday); later, the dentist says yeah, you're going to need an implant there, remarking that he was surprised that I'd kept the cap as long as I did. You mean they're not forever? And you knew that? And didn't tell me? And then the you're going to need an implant there morphs into lets just pull them all and put in implants. Two years, it took to do that.

I mentioned to the dentist, a while back, that I really expected to eventually need dentures and/or implants on the bottom, too, and he tugged on my teeth, then said no, I don't think you will.   Which leads into this: while they were taking xrays of that tooth, they got the one next to it, too,  the one that occasionally aches for no apparent reason, and the dentist said Well, you've got some infection under that tooth, and you've already had a root canal done there, so I think you need to have an implant put in.

See the progression?


Which is where I start to feel like an eight year old again. And I just want to hide.