No Novocain, Please

 

Whenever my wife, Christine, undergoes a dental procedure, caps, fillings, you name it, she forgoes the Novocain. She claims that the shot is worse than the dental work itself. True, afterwards your face feels like rubber for hours, and you drool like a baby, but going without drugs seems impossible. The sound of the drill alone is synonymous with pain. How could any mere mortal take on a dental procedure straight up?


Women endure pain far better than men. That's why they give birth while we stand there and try not to look scared. It's God's punishment for that apple fiasco in the Garden of Eden. I've endured my share of home improvement pain, mainly striking my fingers with blunt tools. According to my wife, if you could bundle up all the times I smashed my thumb and unload that on one direct hit, it wouldn't even come close to labor pains. One time, she did twenty hours of hard labor before she tapped out and went for a spinal block. That was after getting a cap at the dentist without Novocain.

Recently, I bit into a big piece of taffy, and heard a strange crunching sound. I pulled the taffy from my mouth and saw a peculiar object sticking out of the candy. My first thought was,

"Someone's tooth is in my taffy!"

My second thought was,

"Two workers had a fight at a Chinese taffy factory when one socked the other in the jaw, sending his molar on an epic journey into a big vat of pink goo."

My third thought was,

"Wait, it's mine."

Christine immediately lobbied for a dental procedure sans the Novocain. She even resorted to shaming me into it. When that didn't work, she tried to convince me that the pain associated with dental procedures is exaggerated by the drug manufactures to increase sales. Then she said that injecting chemicals in your head is probably not a good idea. She's right there although she's been dying her hair since her teens. I feel like I live in my head. Shooting up numbing agent that close to home does sound like a bad idea. She even tried logic by asking,

"How do you know drilling your teeth hurts? You've never tried it."

She did have a point although I kept thinking Eve probably said something like that to Adam. After a few days, she convinced me to give it try. As my dentist appointment neared, she checked in with me to ensure I was still onboard. The closer I got, the less it sounded like a good idea, but I agreed so I was going commando on the Novocain.

My son, Aidan, recently had his first tiny cavity after twelve years. They numbed his gums first, then numbed them again. They shot up his head with Novocain. They gave him a pillow and blanket. They hooked him up to laughing gas, then gave him general anesthesia. They lit aroma therapy candles, played ocean sounds softly, and sat him in a massage chair. They used a "whisper quiet' drill. It was nice to see dentistry finally acknowledging the sound of a Dremel in your mouth is scary.



 

In my day, my dentist, Dr. Smith, used to do two patients at a time connected by a Jack and Jill torture chamber, full of all sorts of rusty dental tools. He would moon walk between the two rooms, inflicting various degrees of pain on the occupants. He never showed any emotion at all and spoke monotonically. When you cried out during a procedure, he would say, as close to one syllable as possible while still being intelligible,

"Shudup."

That's all I ever heard him say. At one visit, I had three teeth pulled. That was back in the days when dentists thought they should hurry along nature and perform the equivalent of a dental hysterectomy. There was none of this worrying about the comfort of or trauma to the patient. Once, I looked through the connecting room to see my sister, Jeannine, with her arms outstretched. She sounded like she was begging for mercy. Dr. Smith told her,

"Shudup."

He pulled what for a moment looked like her soul out of her mouth then dumped it with a clank into a metal bowl. He looked down at my sister curled up in the fetal position, whimpering, then indifferently moon walked my way. As he entered my little room, he turned. His face was ancient, pale and expressionless. He held a hammer in one hand and a chisel in the other. I screamed something unintelligible about having to call my mother and go to the bathroom. Dr. Smith said,

"Shudup."

Then he dove in as I passed out. I awoke in my bed at home a week later. I have nightmares about it to this day.

 

 

When the time came for my no Novocain experience, I was sitting in the chair, looking up at my dentist looking down at me. She held a drill in one hand and what looked like a pair of pliers in the other. I casually announced,

"No Novocain, please."

She laughed then tapped me in the shoulder while saying in two distinct syllables,

"Shut up!"

I reissued my request. She got real serious when she realized I wasn't joking then sympathetically asked while slowly nodding her head,

"Are you afraid of needles?"

"No, I just want to see if the drill hurts," I answered.

My dentist tried to convince me that it was a bad idea. She explained that if I jumped in the chair, she might inadvertently drill through my face. I assured her I would be fine; after all, my wife had already done it several times, and being a mother, she knows pain. She's the Queen of Pain. So we forged ahead, and this is what I can report. Dentists are much more careful when you forego Novocain. Christine was right all along. There was only the briefest discomfort, and it was nothing compared to the needle.

So next time you go to the dentist, and she pulls out the Novocain, don't cave in to odontophobia. Just say,

"No, thank you."

Then shut up, open up your mouth, and go to happy place, because in the end, it doesn't hurt.

Really.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on October 27, 2016.