いいたい

I'm freaking out a little. Like a lot a little. Today I had my second trip to the dentist. My first visit was fine. It was all surprises, I didnt know what they were doing, but it was nothing too bad. They took some photos, x-rays, scraped around a little. Gave me a print out of all my teeth with cute little kanji next to some of them.

Today when I went the dentist tried to explain what was going to happen. It took five minutes for him to translate "tartar." He spent a lot of time explaining that the dental technician would be teaching me to brush, putting dye in my mouth, blah blah. Then he told me they'd fixing my three cavities. He drew pictures, I had no idea what he was talking about, but Im starting to put the pieces together.

The plump little technician did teach me to brush, dyed my teeth pink, and scraped all the bottom ones (I guess the top ones will be cleaned next week?). Then she took five minutes explaining that we'd be moving chairs.

I followed her.

Then the freak out began. Little drill bits sitting on a table beside my chair, waiting to go in my mouth. They sat me down and poked at a few teeth. She asked, "kore? kore?" She was asking which tooth to fill! I hesitantly agreed on one where I thought I must have a cavity, you know, a tooth in the back that's hard to brush thoroughly.

They injected me with one of those big ass needles, which was fine except, in America I used to get three needles for a filling. I would ask the dentist back home to keep shooting me up until I couldnt feel my fingers. Here, I didnt really know what to do. I felt like I should trust the dentist and I can't say to her, "Do you think that's enough or should you give me a bit more?" It would have to be a big gesture of me shouting, "DRUG MORE DRUG NEEDLE MORE MORE MORE" and pointing to my mouth while mimicking a needle. I didnt feel like going through the theatrics. So, I trusted the dentist and the single shot of Novocaine.

Fuck, it hurt. I could feel the drill digging around in my nerves. I kept stopping the dentist, sitting up at taking breaks, but she never shot me up again, just spread some more oral numbing crap on me.

I started crying a little. Imagine someone digging around in your mouth and you have absolutely no way to communicate with them. It was like a nightmare.

There's a chance I have a root canal next week. That's what I've deciphered from the memory of the drawing the dentist did for me. He explained they'll "cut" my tooth (and drew a picture of them chopping off the top) and then "reform" it with metal. I asked if I'd have a big ugly metal tooth, he said "no" just a dot. I'm confused. My tooth isnt in that bad of shape, it's not green or anything. But he pointed to a cloud in an x-ray and said that needed to be fixed.

I may die. Just a heads up.