A moment from my mouth

For your enjoyment - and perhaps also to serve as warning to those of you guilty of tooth-neglect - a snapshot from my recent tryst at the dentiste's, taken midway through the procedure:
Allow me to point out some of the more delightful features:

• The gently snaking hand of the dental clamp, ensuring that my tooth did not shatter during surgery;
• The flexible steel spikes - although only three are visible, there were in fact four - each inserted all the way down into one carefully hollowed-out canal of my root; and
• My favourite, the sort of fluid elegance of the adjacent tooth's root, curling back, recoiling as it were in horror.
• Not pictured: a blue rubber dental dam, stretched and pinned across my mouth, and perforated to allow access to the one offending tooth. I have to say after my first experience with a dental dam, they seem like a very inexact form of protection - don't you agree that lesbians deserve some improved technology after all these years?
  

Enough local anaesthetic flowed to fell a herd of after-Thanksgiving shoppers. My jaw still hurts today, two and a half days later, from being propped open for two hours. They did not, to answer DemonDoll, provide any of the lovely pills one comes to expect as reward for enduring such torment. Tylenol 3 with codeine was the best on offer (and indeed, would appear to be the wildest that most Canadians dream of - the sweet soothing waves of vicodin have yet to wash these shores), so I opted to stick with our impressive stash of leftovers at home: the one benefit in T's chronic back-woes.

Wednesday will see the completion of this phase of the ordeal: a permanent filling - although, a crown will ultimately have to go over the whole mess, but not until I've saved for it. In the meantime, soups, puddings and purees and no teeth-clenching activities...well, almost none.

Oh, yes, this puts me in mind of one final detail, the most unexpected and perhaps also the most mortifying. After my procedure, T came to fetch me (which was awfully nice of him, though the aftermath was thankfully nowhere near as traumatic as the last time), and we left at around 12:30 pm, as many of the employees were leaving for lunch. The office is located in the gay village area, and as we were walking towards the subway station, a dental employee, an amiable young man who had had, on a previous visit, commerce with my mouth, suddenly overtook us, walking swiftly and with purpose in his eye. He did not notice me, or if he did, did not acknowledge. A few feet ahead of us, he turned down an alleyway - not just any alleyway, but a rather notorious one, as it contains the entrance to one of the city's most popular "gentleman's clubs", and sure enough, as we passed the alleyway, we saw him go right in. It took awhile for this to sink in; I wasn't sure if I had in fact seen it, but T confirms its truth. Am I a prude, or is it rather horrifying to discover that one's dental professional has a thing for lunch-time raunch? Of course, he uses gloves in his work, so really what's the harm? And yet, I am suddenly not looking forward to my next visit.