The Root Canal – Part II

My vast dental knowledge led me to presume (perhaps rightly, perhaps wrongly, possibly both) that I would be in such agony that I’d be eating soup through my nose for a week. 

I figured it best to get one final meal under my belt before saying goodbye to solids. 

There is a cafe in Bethnal Green called “Nico’s Cafe”. It looked ace, proper with little plastic tablecloths and everything. . It was full of the kind of people that frequent greasy spoons (regular notbloggers will know I am fond of a greasy). 

These are the kind of people that normally scare me, but for some unknown reason, in a greasy spoon I am fine, it is my domain also. But I do get an accent, it’s a bit embarrassing, I become almost cockney. “Awight mate, Set breakfast 2 please, but without chips 

The man, I can only presume he is Nico said “without chips?” incredulously, I didn’t think that chips at 9.30 in the morning  were that normal. He offered me some bubble instead, I said “yes mate” but cleverly made it one syllable, like a real man. 

The food arrived and fuck me it was the biggest plate of breakfast I ever saw, and the bubble took up half of it. A lovely proper bubble n squeak with everything in. This was a good breakfast. 

I heartily tucked in when an overriding fear struck me… Am I supposed to eat before dentalist injections? What if it makes me sick, did the Schumacher dentist tell me not to eat? I couldn’t remember.. 

This could be catastrophic. But the cafe was small and slightly scary people cooking the food, if I took the plate back with lots of bubble left I might get looked at funny. 

But what if I throw up in a dentist, especially if she had told me to eat. And it won’t have had to digest, she’ll just look at me disapprovingly, probably recognising the bubble from Nic’s . 

I ate most of it, now feeling so full I could probably be a bit sick without any injection. 

How do I always manage to make things worse? 

Then I had secondary fear. I had nowhere to go clean my teeth, I was going to go into a dentist with bits of potato and onion wedged in the gaps, I bought some mints and a bottle of water to swill with, but this is a dentist I  can’t blind her with such cheap science, she’ll through that kind of trick straight away. 

Oh no. 

In there and being led back in the chair I burp a little, thus undoing all the good work of the mint beforehand. She looks in my mouth – I expect her to pull out a tinned mushroom and for her German eyes to flash red and yell “have you been eating, boy?” But she didn’t, she just said that the hygienist had done well, I figured maybe this particular hygienist had a penchant for leaving bits of breakfast in place of the plaque, like some twisted tooth fairy. 

I looked at her bank of tools, lots of tiny little plugs and what looked like little electric board resistors or something with tiny little pins sticking out – this was going to be fun. 

Suddenly all I could remember was my last dental work, some ten years ago, feeling a needle the size of a biro being pushed into my brain, then feeling the cold squirt of drug before the numbness set it. 

Maybe equipment has changed, or possibly my mind has slightly exaggerated, but I saw the needle, it looked like a metal hair, tiny. 

And it didn’t hurt really. 

we waited for a bit and she said when it was numb I would feel a slight tingling in my lip. 

I could feel a slight tingling in my lip 

She asked me if I could feel a slight tingling in my lip 

I said no., just to be safe she injected me some more -now I knew I was going to feel nothing. 

So I sat back and she started to drill and poke and measure and electronic and drill and scrape and clamp and drill and drill and file and it didn’t really hurt, I had my mouth propped open with a giant rubber bung and so figured I didn’t have to do much, not even hold the sucky thing like the hygienist had made me. 

After a while though I was just bored. 

Really bored 

It takes ages. 

Not even any U2 this time. 

she kept telling me to relax my tongue, it was getting in her way I guess. But if someone tells you to relax your tongue, well, it’s hard. What is relaxed, even some 10 hours on, typing this with no numbness just thought of relaxing my tongue makes it rear up. It has lived in this mouth pretty much unimpeded for all my life, like a lonely old Russian man in small flat with just his memories and hat collection, and suddenly a bunch of Cossacks barge in ad start drilling his furniture and favourite hat. How could he possibly relax. 

But soon it was over and I was being sent on my way, my face a numb as a stroke victim, meaning that every tramp/charity collector/person needing directions on the way home came to ask me something, only for me to dribble something back. 

I went to HMV to buy me a DVD, like a modern day having a sticker after the dentist, but I must have been fairly groggy, I couldn’t find anything I liked. 

So got in, watched Munich on the cable telly and spat into a cup whenever my mouth was full. 

And it never really hurt. 

Ho hum