Had some dental work done yesterday. I don’t believe most dentists. I don’t believe a word they say. But these folks are good. Genuine, trustworthy, not recommending $15,000 of work while admitting it is probably not going to solve anything. That was what happened at a previous dentist, in Midtown. I’ve gone on about that already, the bad experience with the midtown dentist. I only went there because everything I found said that my insurance wouldn’t let me go anywhere else.

I was fitted for a mouthguard yesterday, to guard against bruxism and future tooth decay on account of it. They didn’t do it the way I imagined, with putty and baking and whatnot. She shoved a phallic-shaped device into my mouth, taking hundreds of pictures which, digitally assembled, will serve as the model for the physical mouthguard. It’s like they’re 3D printing the object.

I also got a deep cleaning, which is like a regular cleaning on steroids. I was partly sedated and evidently there was a lot of blood but it was mostly suctioned away by the doctor’s tubes so I didn’t see it as I usually would when I rinsed out my mouth.

I was definitely tense for both these procedures. Buzzsaw-like sounds and screachy metal noises do not encourage mellowness. I was constantly being told to relax my tongue. I found that almost impossible. My body tightened up all over as I tried hard to keep my mouth wide open. I wished they could have put my head at an angle closer to 180 flat. It was slightly dipped and I thought this would encourage my stomach to reverse course and let flow whatever was in there.

After all this I should have stronger teeth. They were weakened by Covid anxiety and laziness about brushing twice daily. My teeth have always been perfect so any kind of work like this is new territory for me. Getting two teeth pulled a couple of years ago was the first major surgery I ever experienced. I mean, it’s the first time I was completely sedated and knocked out for an extended period of time, waking up unaware of what had happened. I was put under for endoscopy procedures but that’s minorly invasive and I was only out for a few minutes at most..

There is a lot going on now that I’m not ready to talk about. Not yet, maybe not ever. Things are ch

anging. The dental work, let’s just say that a primary reason I’ve held on to this job was to get this stuff done at no cost to me. I should get some other stuff done as well. Expensive stuff, cheap stuff, all stuff.