deMOLARized

Tik tok Tik tok... adrenaline rush... heart racing like asphalt... I've always detested hospitals; they all have that one familiar smell of drugs, needles, drips. The cold waiting room is filled with men, women, boys and girls of all shapes, colors, ages and sizes. The painful silence is slashed by periodic wails from patients upstairs. The room is drenched in shooting stares of anxious-to-be-healed patients, everyone waiting for his turn.

I'd avoided the dentist for two years but now, the pain has acted as a great reminder that I truly need help. The hole in my upper right last molar has caved so deep that it could bury an elephant. It's been 20mins since I got here and totally chameleoned into the atmosphere.

There he was, the first patient to have been called off the waiting room, supported down the stairs by two female nurses...cute though but that was so not the catch. We initially envisaged him to be a benchmark, a savior of our fears, a model to handling the pain... but there he was, smitten like a cake in the hands of a fat kid. I basically swallowed my heart, enduring the pain of the gulp because it's basically nothing compared to what my slave master would do to me.

09:51, my name thundered down the hall...

"Extraction right?", I nodded in approval to the nurse's question and she led me to the Indian dentist. Exchanging pleasantries was just a formality, he probably wouldn't care how much hurt he'd inflict. I laid down on the bed, shut my eyes as I felt my spirit leaving me. "Have you eaten?" the dentist asked. I shook my head, "No". After advising me on how it won't hurt but still need to eat before anything can be done, I felt my spirit rushing back at the anticipation of food. I got up, ran downstairs, got food and raced back up. I was directed to where I could eat. But voila, I was welcomed by the tears of a wailing patient. She cried so hard that I wondered if she extracted her entire mouth. The doctor told me it won't hurt but she...OMG...he lied!! I lost appetite, forced huge quantities of chicken pie straight down to my throat, gulped water, tried reciting the Lord's prayer but I gave up on the 5th line. I walked back into the dentist's office with my heart in my hands. Lying down, eyes shut, mouth wide open, I felt one needle...another needle...yet another. Talk about feeling, I stopped feeling my mouth. The dentist told me to open my eyes, I did.

Like a craftsman, he gathered tools of all types. My eyelids quickly glued my eyeballs. "Open them", he begged.. I did again, slowly, quizzical though. He smiled 5 seconds later as his nurse announced, "your tooth is out" then she dished out a truckload of instructions. It felt weird, all I could think of was the fact that my tooth is out totally painlessly.

I quickly drew out my phone... "what to expect after tooth extraction". Google truly has answers for everything. But at this point, my cowardly spirit left again. So here I am, sitting in the waiting room with drugs waiting for my prodigal spirit to come back and accept our fate...