When I’m in the dentist’s chair

I sit back in the dentist’s chair and I think, here we go again.

A “handful” of cavities and a root canal or possible extraction. I think about how everyone knows that chemo makes your hair fall out, but almost no one knows that it can also make your teeth fall out.

I think it’s all too much.

The last nine years since my diagnosis, 12 years since I got sick, 28 since my first migraine attacks…it’s all too much. I don’t think I can handle one single more thing. I don’t think I am strong enough.

I think patients should be able to charge doctors late fees when appointments start more than 10 minutes late.

I think about everything and nothing except the needle slipping into my gums. I think, “…no single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable.” David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest. I think the citation.

The drill is the loudest, highest-pitched dental drill I think I’ve ever heard. To distract myself, I imagine the reticulin fibers accumulating in my bone marrow; I picture them branching out like frost on a windowpane.

I spend some time thinking about how odd it feels to have one nostril numb and one normal. I think about the dentist writing me a script for 800mg Ibuprofen, which I can’t take and which would barely register as pain relief most days.

I think I might panic, so I make myself think Saint Patrick’s Breastplate.

His bursting from the spiced tomb;
His riding up the heavenly way;
His coming at the day of doom:
I bind unto myself today.

I open my eyes and focus, for a second, on a gleaming hook, the end of the tool that is not in my mouth, digging out decay and scraping along my teeth and my eardrums simultaneously. I close my eyes again and live for 2,400 endurable moments (forty unendurable minutes) of dental ministration.

I think that if I had died when I had expected to, my handful of cavities, my crooked dental roots, my butchered medical record, my early stage reticulin deposition, my disability denial would all have ceased to matter.

The dentist tells me someone canceled; I can stay and she’ll tackle a second quadrant of my mouth. Two visits in one. “Just rest your mouth. I have a few others to do while you get numb. Walk, take a break. You’re not tied to the chair.”

Two rooms away they clean the teeth of a toddler. She is sobbing the whole time, “Mama, please, mama!” while her mother holds her hands and says, “I’m here, baby. They’re cleaning your teeth, baby. We’re almost done, I promise. They’re only cleaning your teeth.”

Someone asks if their insurance will allow them to receive treatment for a hole in one of their teeth, and I don’t think, I just feel the grief and the weariness.

They lay me back down and start on the new territory of decay. Bottom right quadrant. A trickle of water and blood runs along the roof of my mouth and down my throat, and I swallow compulsively, near to panicking. The dentist shifts and the suction nozzle tucked into the corner of my mouth jerks my head to the left, like a fish caught on a line. “Sorry, stepped on the hose.”

I think about all the tests my body has undergone and how my mind escaped them.

Eärendil was a mariner
Who tarried in Arvernien;
He built a ship of timber felled
In Nimbrethil to journey in…

The drill and the water and the suction cease and the dentist tells me she wants to use a different material to fill my cavities, to better outlast the side effects of any medications. I nod and she winces. “It’s just…not so aesthetically appealing,” she hedges. “It’s cool. You’re the boss,” I say, and she laughs. “Nowhere in the front,” she adds quickly, “Just these back ones.”

I think aesthetically appealing to who? And I don’t say out loud that it doesn’t matter because my bone marrow is turning itself into scar tissue and I’m dying and I’m tired of dying.

I think about a young girl and I pray because I know the verdict is scheduled to be read tomorrow. I pray for justice and healing, for safety and space.

The dentist cups my cheek and chin in her gloved hand as she presses down on the filling. I remember, “I will remove from you a heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” Yes, please, amen.

I have felt the presence of God like a warm blanket falling around my shoulders, like the sun on my head and hot sand between my toes on a clear, breezy day.

I gag at the smells of hot dental drill and tooth dust. I think of Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances, of my grandmother so recently preceding us all to glory. The great cloud of witnesses.

What do they think of me? What does God?

The suction noises stop again and the dentist tells me to check my bite. “Got most of them. Thank you for staying,” she says. Seven down in two hours. I’m unsure how many remain. “Come back and we’ll get the rest.” One more visit or maybe two. Plus the extraction. Plus the crown. Plus the cleaning. Plus the primary care visit and the oncology visit and the disability lawyer consult and the medical records paperwork and the dog behavior specialist and the biopsy results…

I think it’s all too much.

I’m sobbing, “Father, please. Father, please.” He’s holding my hands. He’s here, He loves me.

Great is His Faithfulness.