Saturday trip to the Dentist

Saturday morning saw me cringing in the hygienist's chair.I was alternately clutching the chair, twisting an imaginary object in my hands, screwing my eyes up tight and almost levitating in my seat.

I was subjected to a deep 'clean' and 'polish'. When I think of the word 'polish', I think of someone gently and carefully rubbing a soft cloth along a plane of shiny wood. Ha! Of all the deeply unpleasant experiences I've  had in the past three years - smear tests, having botox injected into the nerve in my eye (nothing to do with wrinkles - don't ask!) and it taking the anaesthetist 45 minutes to administer an epidural, prior to a Cesarean (my back really did look like a pin cushion), this had to be the worst. The eerie whining of the drill. The way the cleaning machine (instrument of torture) shot shock waves of pain into my nerve endings at every stroke, and the choking sensation of having that mouthful of cold water/powered tooth/fragments of polish clogging up the mouth, without the means to get rid of it, the horrible, prone, vulnerability of the situation!

It's hardly a new or revolutionary thing to state how unpleasant a trip to the dentist can be. I'm not breaking any new ground with this post. But perhaps because it is such a cliche, a trope of our culture, it makes it all the more of a shock when you are actually subjected to this voluntary assault. "It can't be as bad as all that!" You think, trying to banish all thoughts of the film 'Marathan Man' from your mind, before (and during) your visit. Actually, it's worse! :/