William Butler Yeats' poem, The Second Coming, must really resonate with me because I started thinking about it and writing about it on this blog, and it seemed like deja vu. It is. From here.
But now I'm writing about a different kind of falling apart. Not marriage, but my teeth.
This morning I had my first root canal. The center is not holding.
I apparently had a weird reaction to the numbing agent, which I've never had for a regular filling. My vision became blurry, my hands began to shake, and I had a weird out-of-body type experience. It was troubling and oddly fascinating at the same time. I could hear the music in the room, but my brain felt like it was asleep, so I was both aware and out-of-it simultaneously.
Nitrous oxide to the rescue.
My dentist said a whole bunch of gunk came out of my tooth, so I am hoping the infection is gone and if there is anything left of it, the antibiotic will knock the rest of it out. The procedure began at 8:30; it is now 1:30, and I still don't have full feeling in my mouth. She really had to load me up. She anticipates I will feel much better, even with post-treatment soreness, because my mouth was throbbing so much prior to it.
In five years' time, I've gone from someone who didn't mind dental appointments to someone who loathes them. Mere anarchy has been loosed upon my mouth.
I jest, of course.....a little bit. Certainly a poem about war and civilization's destruction can't be related to my incisors. But maybe it can to what seems to happen to me every fall, a cyclical motion of sadness that comes, a time of fretting that repeats itself.
It has happened every year at this time since 2004. It almost feels like PTSD, but without nightmares or panic attacks. It is a low-grade sadness that pervades me. I am good at hiding it most of the time, except when my head has been messed with from numbing agents.
I can even enjoy this balmy, blue sky day because I feel desert birds circling.
But now I'm writing about a different kind of falling apart. Not marriage, but my teeth.
This morning I had my first root canal. The center is not holding.
I apparently had a weird reaction to the numbing agent, which I've never had for a regular filling. My vision became blurry, my hands began to shake, and I had a weird out-of-body type experience. It was troubling and oddly fascinating at the same time. I could hear the music in the room, but my brain felt like it was asleep, so I was both aware and out-of-it simultaneously.
Nitrous oxide to the rescue.
My dentist said a whole bunch of gunk came out of my tooth, so I am hoping the infection is gone and if there is anything left of it, the antibiotic will knock the rest of it out. The procedure began at 8:30; it is now 1:30, and I still don't have full feeling in my mouth. She really had to load me up. She anticipates I will feel much better, even with post-treatment soreness, because my mouth was throbbing so much prior to it.
In five years' time, I've gone from someone who didn't mind dental appointments to someone who loathes them. Mere anarchy has been loosed upon my mouth.
I jest, of course.....a little bit. Certainly a poem about war and civilization's destruction can't be related to my incisors. But maybe it can to what seems to happen to me every fall, a cyclical motion of sadness that comes, a time of fretting that repeats itself.
It has happened every year at this time since 2004. It almost feels like PTSD, but without nightmares or panic attacks. It is a low-grade sadness that pervades me. I am good at hiding it most of the time, except when my head has been messed with from numbing agents.
I can even enjoy this balmy, blue sky day because I feel desert birds circling.
1 comment:
I feel your pain. The only thing I dread more than dental work is a colonoscopy prep. The actual colonoscopy isn't too bad, but man, that prep is the pits. I never dreaded the dentist until my forties when I started having problems with cracked teeth, caused by gritting my teeth during sleep, which at the time of my life, I never felt like I really slept. So I now have five crowns accompanied by root canals, and I'm sure my appointment next week will be a bad one. I dread it, I really do. IF my death is anywhere in the very near future, I would just as soon it would happen before next Thursday.
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