The Tooth Hurts

Thursday, March 02, 2006

My friend Christi has had a pretty miserable...well...month or so. Especially this week. She had to have a root canal a month or so ago and this week had ANOTHER one...on the same tooth! She may have been to the dentist more times in the past month than I have been in my entire life. I'm not going to count because I was told there would be no math.

Upon reading her recent blog, it bums me out that she's having such a painful tough time with it. But of course I try to cheer her up...so my humorous advice to Christi is: "Get a new dentist. Preferably one who doesn't DO root canals. Then you don't have to have anymore. Problem solved." With logic like that, how can you go wrong?

My serious advice to Christi is: "Get a new dentist." I mean, I don't know the details, and she's been going to his guy for a long time and trusts him...but TWO root canals on the same tooth? I'm sorry, I'm neither a math genius nor a dental student, but that just doesn't add up to me. If you do root canal on me, you get ONE shot to get it right. I should ask her if her dentist looks like Steve Martin from "Little Shop of Horrors?" What's his deal?

My friend Sam, he hates dentists. He really really (no really) dislikes them. Not as people, but he hates going because it always hurts. For a while about 8 years ago, we played in a weekly pickup basketball game, and a few of the guys we played with were dentists. Sam went to one of them and it was fine, he said the guy was great and Sam kept going back to him for a few years. Lucky dentist. I say that because the previous time Sam had gone to a dentist he took his stun gun. Yup, you read that right and it is no lie. He took his stun gun. And when he sat in the chair, he showed it to the tooth doctor. "I don't like being here," he said. "If you hurt me, I'm going to hurt you back." The dentist chuckled nervously. Sam laughed too and said, "No, dude, I'm totally serious." Suffice to say the dentist was rather terrified, but did a very delicate job under the stressful circumstances.

So my advice to Christi is: "Get a new dentist. Or a stun gun."

Of course, now she's got me thinking. I'm well overdue for a trip to the dentist. Maybe in preparation I should get a stun gun. Or a man-eating plant.