One fine evening, in an ice-cream parlour..ordered a sundae...after an hour with my hand over the cheek, waiting patiently... "Come in", announced a voice, i mumbled and went in. I started with "Good Evening sir..", he cut me saying "lie down", pondering if i had actually spit anything wrong i tried lying over a fabulous hybrid version of a chair and a sofa all along staring at some curious looking instruments that were neatly arranged before me. The dentist now came to my eye level and asked me "what is the problem??"..i repeated in my mind "whats the problem?? everything is..My exams..Indian team..Gen. Musharaff..my fulminant tooth ache"...i blurted out "its my stupid tooth, its aching..", ordering me to open my mouth, so did i do, he put a spatula kind of thing into my mouth and examined everything, he said "you have a bad case of tooth infection, it is quite common these days.." and he broke-off and went to his desk and attended to some call, while he was busy talking i wore a contorted expression, all because of the fact that he left those digging instruments in my mouth. He came to me and continued the stuff from where he had paused, "you will be needing a Root-Canal-Treatment since the infection is quite severe and it cannot be mended by ordinary ways", now that it was evident that my tooth needs some serious amount of dentistry we were convinced that it shall be obliged to, next comes the most traumatizing part- the fees..he said it would just cost us four thousand bucks..(i mumbled JUST 4k-like drafting out a cheque-you gotta write the word 'only' in your amount even if it were a penny or a fortune!!).. i sighed..so this month's highlights shall be spending a wholesome amount in dentistry. My software upgrades will have to wait for yet another year since my hardware needs immediate attention :(. He then announced to me that this treatment needs three sittings since it involves three major phases and he put across some medical term (its quite common for medicos to scare engineers with un-pronounceable words), i left the clinic with mixed feelings.
On way home, my sister was piping in some curious questions "hey how did u feel like on the chair, i guess it would be fun over that, you could sit,sleep,move it automatically..." i didn't utter a word-i prayed god "please make her understand that it irritates a person if he is asked bout his medical torment", she continued "the colour of the apron that he put over could 've been pink, blue was dull, why didn't he give you one apron.." this time i said "you are stopping now, or else you shall be visiting an ortho". The prospect of getting a tooth alright with a dentist is like a cat on..no no it shall be a T-REX on the wall, it ought to balance the right way and go on.
Treatment..was it?? This time he wished me cheerfully (now that he has got someone on whom he can try his pranks on and still get a hefty sum for it!!), i too wished him and clambered over that strange chair or whatever it is called. Here comes the plot-the driller,i initially didn't realise that it was one, when he put it into my mouth and started his business, it gave a high frequency noise that was piercing my ears coupled with the drilling action on my tooth, while doing this he kept talking to me so as to make me realise that he wasn't going to kill me, he said "whenever you feel uncomfortable just raise your hands", wow!! i thought, he has given me some scope to communicate with the mortal world.
The worst of the worst was that he was working with a mirror!!! The reflection of my mouth and he was seeing it, what if he gets muddled and takes right for left and left for right, there is a high risk of messing up the entire business. It was only after his re-assuring wink did i let him do the punk business. He was busy tinkering my tooth when he jerked quite unexpectedly that made me scream, he then reassuringly patted me saying that his predictions were right, the infection is god damn deep (200 feet!!!), i mussitated "i know, i know, that's why i am here". His tools were quite interesting, one was a simple 'dehydrator' a tiny pipe like thingy that sucks out all the water/spittle from our mouth (i had fun with that trying out in all parts of my mouth when he left me all alone), i then remembered the brief stint Mr.Bean had with his dentist wherein he paralyzes the doc and then does the treatment all by himself, silently visualizing that i grinned. The nurse who had been observing all this gave me a 'you-are-not-normal?' look for which i simply stared aimlessly that made her think otherwise. How can i possibly explain all the antics Bean did to his doc with a coupla needles in my mouth, aah needles...this is the most EVIL part of my treatment-grooving needles.
Treatment..was it?? This time he wished me cheerfully (now that he has got someone on whom he can try his pranks on and still get a hefty sum for it!!), i too wished him and clambered over that strange chair or whatever it is called. Here comes the plot-the driller,i initially didn't realise that it was one, when he put it into my mouth and started his business, it gave a high frequency noise that was piercing my ears coupled with the drilling action on my tooth, while doing this he kept talking to me so as to make me realise that he wasn't going to kill me, he said "whenever you feel uncomfortable just raise your hands", wow!! i thought, he has given me some scope to communicate with the mortal world.
The worst of the worst was that he was working with a mirror!!! The reflection of my mouth and he was seeing it, what if he gets muddled and takes right for left and left for right, there is a high risk of messing up the entire business. It was only after his re-assuring wink did i let him do the punk business. He was busy tinkering my tooth when he jerked quite unexpectedly that made me scream, he then reassuringly patted me saying that his predictions were right, the infection is god damn deep (200 feet!!!), i mussitated "i know, i know, that's why i am here". His tools were quite interesting, one was a simple 'dehydrator' a tiny pipe like thingy that sucks out all the water/spittle from our mouth (i had fun with that trying out in all parts of my mouth when he left me all alone), i then remembered the brief stint Mr.Bean had with his dentist wherein he paralyzes the doc and then does the treatment all by himself, silently visualizing that i grinned. The nurse who had been observing all this gave me a 'you-are-not-normal?' look for which i simply stared aimlessly that made her think otherwise. How can i possibly explain all the antics Bean did to his doc with a coupla needles in my mouth, aah needles...this is the most EVIL part of my treatment-grooving needles.
A cute box with several packs of needles with brightly coloured needle heads, so this is where the crux of the treatment lies-he chanted. Getting fractious is quite an ordinary thing in a dentist's lair, i thought. I didnt give him even the faintest idea of response that i understood what he said and simply opened my mouth, tasting his success he put on some febrilish(portmanteau of febrile and sluggish- my invention ;) smelling medicine over it and like a child that was offered a huge array(sorry..couldn't resist the usage of word array which strongly reminds me of the wonderful programming classes) of brilliantly coloured chocolates he started selecting the needles (drillers- a technical term :P )and got to work, occasionally i jerked, irked, yelled till a point when my eyes were brimming with tears, tears of pain, tears of toothache, tears of Colgate (aye, i liked that paste- it tasted super, i blame it, the taste distracted me from brushing my tooth in the right way. Three days of torment, agony, harassment, crucifixion (OK OK all mean the same, i just wanted it to be implied or rather nailed strongly), came then the final part of fixing a ceramic protection to my tooth and after which it shall be Scot free, for a lifetime........
Now with my tooth fixed, the moral or whatever it can be called of this story zeroes to simple thing -
Now with my tooth fixed, the moral or whatever it can be called of this story zeroes to simple thing -
Pictures speak LOUDER than words
