“So… remember we talked about that gum surgery? Last time you were in?”
“No,” I said. I don’t remember anything about that.”
“I’m sure we talked about it,” My dentist said, frowning at me slightly, like I was misbehaving. I looked at the floor, thinking, maybe he did say something. Something I really didn’t want to hear and so I blocked it out the moment it came into my brain, like an airplane toilet. Whoosh….gone.
“But,” I started. “Maybe they aren’t so bad?”
This time he just frowned, not even faking it. He got one of the x-rays for me to see, and then starting speaking in tongues, mostly with numbers with the E-49 or the B-52 bicuspid or whatever thefuck’d tooth it was I didn’t want to be hearing about. The x-rays said it all. I looked at them, really looked. While they weren’t quite as bad as that guy on the “Hellraiser” movies, they weren’t far off either. I could be a stand in if they do any more sequels. I sighed.“Okay, what do I have to do?”
“Okay?” My husband said. “You said Okay? Nobody actually gets it done!”
I thought about this. And over the course of the next week or two, I was telling others about this surgery, and did they know anyone who had it done? At least three people said they were told they needed it. To which they just then laughed and said, “Uh..Maybe some other time..?!” Or just, “Yeah, that’s just not happening.” But my day finally came. They’d explained the procedure to me, how they were going to tear strips off the roof of my mouth and then thread this tissue between my gums, like super–expensive basket weaving. I wouldn’t be able to eat for a while. I wouldn’t be able to not take pain pills for a while. I’d have some bruising and swelling. This they did not explain adequately. I came home with pain pills and strict instructions about using rocket-fuel flavoured mouthwash. I seemed ok, really I did. My face began blowing up, but, hey, that was expected, right? I shifted ice from one side of my face to the next, and I don’t really remember what else I did, for several days. Somewhere in there I still took care of children, which is scary. (Thanks to my friends and neighbors who drove my kids to things, I owe you) My face continued to increase in size until I went from “cute chipmunk” (husband’s kind words) to “freaky mutant” (from looks on kids faces). Then came the bruising. I looked, I shit you not, like someone had pummelled my face into a car. It was bad. REaaaallly bad. If I walked down the street, people stared. Or if I happened to be buying a giant jumbo sized box of Fruit Loops because it was birthday cereal and they get to choose but there is no smaller size and might as well grab those cookies and get to the register…and I left my kids in the car and am most likely about to be arrested… they stare then too. I CAN SEE THAT YOURE LOOKING AT MY FACE, YOU KNOW. I run away.
After the fun grocery stop, I took my daughter to her first real tennis lessons. Not the freaky guy at the rec centre who let the kids slam the balls into each other and then go pick them up. No, real lessons in an air-conditioned, roofed building. I walked over to the other Moms and Dads who seemed to know each other. They either turned away, horrified to look me in the eye, or did a little ping-pong with their eyeballs over me….kid all dirty, strange woman in t-shirt of a rabbit with antlers, bruises around the face… they are adding it up. We are total shitheels that crawled out from under. I am a beaten wife, and this is my child that eats dog biscuits for treats.
“Hello!” I say to a woman close to me. “Hey, my face, I know. DENTAL SURGERY.” I say this really loud. “Never actually do it if they tell you its necessary…” She titters. She takes pity on me and is my friend for one week for an hour only. It is kind of her.
The next day I take my kids to a birthday party and my daughter somehow smashes her head on the only non-wrapped pipe in the whole g-damn jungle maze. There is blood. Lots and LOTS of blood so I have a freak out and make an ambulance come. I had also just met a new mom at this party who later called her friend to see if “I was, you know, all right at home.” I think that’s great, she put herself out there, you know? I looked like hell, but I was all right.
They weren’t so sure at the hospital.
As I am giving my daughter’s details, the nurse behind the desk looks at me, one eyebrow raised, like I do when I know someone is bullshitting me.
“And what happened to you?”
I blink, not understanding. “To Me?” I ask. “What do you mean?”
The nurse looks at the other nurse. I have forgotten my face, and I’m holding a kid covered in a bloody t-shirt with a bandage wound around her head.
“Oh!” I had DENTAL SURGERY.” She looks at me for a second and then tilts her head…
“Yeah, I had a friend who had that done! She had massive bruising too! Just like that!” I breathe out a sigh. The cops aren’t called because her friend had this surgery. Minor miracles do happen! But there’s a new circle on my calendar, not far off.
“Whoops,” The dental surgeon said at my last visit. “We’ll have to do that one again.”
Oh well, it’s only one tooth. How bad can it be?