I lie to my dentist. Isn’t that crazy?<\/p>\n
My dentist asks ‘Problems with any of your teeth?’ while poking at fillings with the creepy metal hook. I can’t speak with someone’s hand in my mouth. I answer with a negative uh-uh grunt and immediately a wave of heat shoots through me because I’m lying. I almost never lie.\u00a0There is<\/em> a tooth that bothers me and has for at least 3 of my past visits \u00a0– that’s every six months thanks to my good insurance that covers 2 cleanings a year. I never miss one.<\/p>\n I’m not exactly in pain but I often have a weird metallic taste in my mouth that I suspect is my ancient mercury filling leaching out from a crack in one of my bottom molars. The taste is unpleasant and some days, especially when I can’t stop worrying the damn thing with my tongue, it starts to hurt a bit. Why do I lie about it like some sneaky third grader?<\/p>\n Part of it is the money. I suspect that there’s not enough tooth left to be fill-able so I’ll need a crown and I gather those aren’t cheap. But hell, I recently shelled out almost 2K to replace an oil tank for my house which was depressing because there’s so much this old place needs and you can’t even see the thing. Not like the windows or a new garage door that would be nice but are not urgent. There was no question of risking a basement full of oil so I sucked it up and took care of business. I need to do the same for my mouth.<\/p>\n Usually, when I know there’s potential physical pain or trouble ahead I\u00a0strike preemptively. I had my wisdom teeth out a few years ago because of signs of decay not because they hurt but because I knew they eventually might. And when there was something suspicious on one of my ovaries I had them out without a second thought rather than dilly-dally with tests. (it was nothing – both the thing and the surgery) Surely it’s just a matter of time before what now feels unpleasant becomes excruciating? What if that’s during the early hours of a Sunday morning when no dentist can be found?<\/p>\n Like everybody else on the planet, I hate, hate, hate getting dental work. It’s all I can do to get through the scraping part of a cleaning. My dread of dentist has given me excellent oral hygiene that wins me praise when I’m in the chair. I didn’t mind getting my wisdom teeth out because it didn’t involve any high pitched drill noises or smells of smoking tooth. (And he gave me laughing gas.)<\/p>\n I have a dentist appointment in about a month. This time, I’ll tell the truth. And ask for drugs.<\/p>\n What crazy lies do you tell?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I lie to my dentist. Isn’t that crazy? My dentist asks ‘Problems with any of your teeth?’ while poking at fillings with the creepy metal hook. I can’t speak with someone’s hand in my mouth. I answer with a negative uh-uh grunt and immediately a wave of heat shoots through me because I’m lying. I … Continue reading Crazy Lies<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[193,242,239],"class_list":["post-5435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dentist","tag-money","tag-pain"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pPzTS-1pF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5435"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5440,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5435\/revisions\/5440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}