I was wrong. The root canal was worse.

I love lying backward in a chair with a dental dam and six sharp instruments stuck in my mouth along with a suction cup that's vacuuming off my cheek and two guys hovering above me holding bright lights. Let's do that for about an hour. The dentist had me wear those huge grandma cataract sunglasses but the gunk still splattered in my eyes. I kept thinking, What if something goes horribly awry and I die like this? I don't know what the cause could be--an allergic reaction to a chemical or maybe suffocation from the rubber sheet they stretched over my face (for real. One thing that did happen was the dentist almost cut my lip off with the scissors as he was trimmming the sheet so I could breath out of my nose). Anyway, I decided I would be a sad case if I died because I was trying to be so cheerful ahead of time, joking about how I had pureed turkey for Thanksgiving just to be sure I didn't damage my tooth any further, ha haha hahahahha. He showed me a video of what would be happening in my mouth, but it in no way prepared me for the actual removal of the nerves in my tooth. At one point, he fished something out and said, Do you have a bad stomach? I said, Errr. He showed me the nerve he had pulled out of my head--it looked like a miniature version of the piece of meat you find in the smaller part of the crab claw. He said, Isn't that something? I wanted to say, Let's make it into a necklace, but couldn't speak still because of the instruments and the blood and all. We're not done either. I have to go back about 2 more times so he can replace the screws with silly putty and then add a crown.

At least he gave me vicodin. I told my mom that and she said, Oh, no, don't take any. Think of Rush Limbaugh. As if. That's the only reason I agreed to have one in the first place. The dental assistant told me that one of their other patients had asked for Oxycotin after a routine filling. I said, Oh, do you think I could get some of that? He gave me a sad look.