Six more months

Yeah, I'm good for six more months now, tooth-wise. (My checkup was today).

I think the reason dental checkups are so fraught* for me is that they include a lot of things that I dislike - that trigger things that bother me or cause a lowgrade fear response. (I'm not quite neurologically atypical enough to run screaming from the room or refuse to open my mouth for the dentist, but neither am I laid-back enough not to let them bother me): lying back in what feels like a vulnerable position (unable to defend self if the need arose), having stuff stuck in my mouth, having METAL in my mouth, hearing sounds behind my head where I can't see what they are (I tell myself, "That's just the hygienist opening the packet of autoclaved instruments and laying them out" but it doesn't really help), high-pitched buzzing or whining sounds (even the tooth-cleaning, which I know means the appointment is nearly over, makes enough noise to make me very uncomfortable).

(And before you ask: no, having gas would make it worse, I think. Because I freak out with stuff over my nose, and also, I freak out over feeling not-in-control of a situation, and that's what gas is kind of designed to do - make you give up control.)

(High pitched sounds in general bother me. If someone's buffing the floor out in the hall and the buffer is in the baritone range, I'm just fine with it, but if someone's drilling something even FURTHER down the hall, and the drill is the typical whiny tenor drill, it's all I can do not to leave my office.

I do not know if it's related, but when my Pandora station starts feeding me opera - even though it is NOT an opera-related station - I let the male arias stand but more often than not hit the "thumbs down" button for the soprano arias.)

(* ha, ha, that's apparently kind of a trendy word right now. And some people HATE it with a passion. I am using it somewhat ironically here)

Anyway, I wound up seeing the younger dentist - the senior guy, the one I almost always see and who knows my whole dental history, was still on his lunch hour. (They had to move my appointment up in time; luckily I was free at that time). The hygienist, while checking my gums, remarked on a couple of "pockets" that had formed around the frontmost molar on each side. Which scared me, because I had visions of that awful gum-flap treatment that I know people have had to go through, and WHY ME WHY NOW because I am absolutely compulsive these days about dental hygiene, and on and on.

And then I thought: one tooth on each side? And I asked her: which teeth again? And she showed me. And I said, oh, I had a lower retainer that was cemented in, I think the bands were on those teeth, could that be it? And she was all, I don't know, let's let the dentist see.

So the dentist came in. Remarked on how good everything looked. The hygienist brought up the pockets. He looked at them. "They didn't bleed?" No, they didn't bleed. And he looked again. And he looked at me and said, "Did you have orthodontia when you were a kid?" And trying not to sound TOO annoyed at the hygienist for not mentioning that I said yes, that I had a lower retainer cemented in with bands for something like five years. And he said yeah, this is typical for that. Our treatment in this case is to do nothing unless they actually start to hurt or bleed.

(I think the senior dentist in the practice - the one I usually see - had remarked on it once, early in my time here, and then flipped through my chart and said, "Oh. Lower retainer. That explains it" and never said anything more about it.)

But anyway, I'm done with that until May. (Honestly, other medical stuff I've done? Doesn't bother me near as much. Eye exams - even the much-disliked glaucoma screening - are a doddle. Mammograms are more awkward and sort of amusing in a cosmic way ("I'm standing in a room stripped to the waist and a woman I don't know is putting my breasts between Plexiglas sheets") than scary (Though I've never had one that was anything other than perfectly clear, so probably that's why there's no fear there). Even the next-most-hated annual thing I do (the "ladies'" exam) isn't as bad, because the doctor I go to is relatively fast and she explains anything she's going to do before she does it. (And there isn't the hunt-and-check and agonizing waiting as the doctor "hmmms" and "aaahhhs" that always makes me think I have about a dozen cavities when I'm at the dentist).

Granted, I'm still a bit young for some of the other things that people go through (and have never had a problem great enough to merit a stress test, though I suspect that would not be that much different from my usual morning workout). But dental work is probably my least-liked medical thing.