Genre: horror

Travis likes to tell stories about our travels, but occasionally strays into politics. I like to write humor, mostly, but this time I am going to stray into horror. If you have a dental phobia, I advise that you a.) Read no further, and b.) Don't go to the dentist in Belgium.

While we were in Amsterdam I noticed a slight tooth ache. I wrote it off to the occasional tooth aches I get when my sinuses are really stuffy. Apparently that can happen, my last dentist explained to me. But as the week went on, I noticed more discomfort, until on Wednesday and Thursday nights I was waking up in the middle of the night to take ibuprofen. I had not yet found a dentist here, but I knew it was time. Friday I called a hotline that helps expats find English speaking doctors, but they didn't have any dentists listed in Gent. They gave me the web page of the phone book, and I looked up a dentist that is only a block away. The woman I talked to said she was comfortable with English, and, I'll admit, I was sort of glad that the first appointment she had wasn't until Monday. I was beginning to suspect that the tooth hurting was one that I already had a crown on, which probably meant that it would have to be a root canal. Fun. Spent the weekend on tenterhooks, which are apparently "hooked nails for securing cloth on a tenter" or so I hear.

When I went to the office on Monday, I was immediately informed that the dentist I had the appointment with was out sick (his wife), but that the husband had a cancellation at 2:30 PM. Could I come back then? Oh yes! Feeling like a condemned woman who had been granted a small reprieve, I dashed out and ran some errands. Later that afternoon I arrived about 5 minutes late, but the appointment before me wasn't done yet anyway, so I got the opportunity to look at dental flyers in Dutch (interesting!). Colgate is trying to break into the market here, I think.

At about 2:45 the gentleman rushed in, and invited me back to the patient room. I'm used to having to fill out intake paperwork, but I guess they don't do that here. I sat down in the chair, while he hurried around dumping out trays, disinfecting apparatus, and tossing instruments in another room.
"What brings you here?" he asked brusquely. "Just a checkup?"
"No, I have a painful tooth with hot and cold sensitivity." I admitted. He asked me a few questions about how long I had been feeling the pain, and tilted the chair back. A few probes later, I admitted I couldn't tell for sure which tooth it was. My whole lower left jaw was hurting, honestly. He took an xray, offhandedly asking me if I was pregnant right before shooting the film.
At this point he entered my name, phone number and address into his computer.
"This is not such a nice street, the one you live on." He said. I shrugged, and commented that it is close to the train station.
"That is the only good point about it."
Sadly, the xray didn't reveal any more information about the tooth, so he blew some cold air on my teeth. "Can you feel this?" he asked.
"Oh! God! Yes!" I cried. He took the air away.
"Can you still feel it?"
"Yes!" I said, as pulses of agony rippled through my jaw.
Then he took a piece of cotton and got it very cold with, I think, dry ice. "Oh boy." I gasped. This was going to hurt. He put it on one molar...nothing.
He held it to my crown...little tears popped out of the corners of my eyes.
Yup, that was the one.
"I don't think I am going to be able to get the crown off." He warned. And then all of a sudden he pulled out this three inch needle. Whoa, what's going on here? One minute we're trying to figure out what is going on, next minute he is pulling out a huge syringe. What is he doing?? Usually, in the states my dentist would discuss with me a little more what is going on before they just start.

I cringed and said something like, "jesus!" when I saw the needle. As my family knows, I am not good with needles. In fact, sometimes I pass out. The last dentist I had in the US didn't even use that sort of needle anymore, instead some sort of space age thing that would directly numb the gums and tooth she was working on. All of my dentists in the states would at least put a little bit of topical anisthetic on a Qtip and numb the injection site first. My heart started really pounding.
"Would you prefer to do this without this?" he asked dryly, waving the needle in my face.
"No! I'm just one of those people who really doesn't like coming to the dentists!" I said, feeling really panicky now. He made some comment about how no one likes going to the dentist. I rolled my eyes away and tried to at least not see the needle.
Then he pulled out some sort of bizarre torture device and started bashing my crown trying to get it off. Most dentists in the states don't even use those anymore, I read later on the internet, because they can damage the underlying tooth more than it is worth.
"Well, it is well made." he said. "I am going to just have to drill through it."
"Can you DO that?" I asked, my stomach lurching. "Isn't there metal in there?" (Gosh, this thing was expensive, too. Now you're going to drill through it? I thought).
"I can't tell from the xray," he answered. No more information than that, the drill just comes out. He doesn't say anything like, "if this hurts, raise your hand". After a few moments of drilling he says, "There IS metal in there." No, REEEALLY. Switches out the drill bit, gets back to work. Suddenly, more pain is stabbing into my jaw. I raise my hand.
"I can really feel this." I say. He grabs the needle, and almost with relish stabs it back into the hinge of my jaw again. Picking, of course, a new spot to jab, one that wasn't numb, so I got to feel the needle going in again.
I am sensitive to dental anesthetic. It makes my heart race, and it makes me shaky. On top of my pain and fear already, now I feel like my heart is going to lurch out of my chest and go down the hall for a brisk jog.
I draw in a ragged breath and say, "If it still hurts, I will raise my hand again, okay?"
"Tilt your head back more," he instructs. "Can you still feel anything?"
"I can still feel cold, and a feeling like stabbing pins in my tooth." I told him.
"You aren't supposed to feel anything." He sternly admonished me. Now this is my fault!
"But as long as you don't feel pain..." he starts drilling again. Okay, okay, he doesn't define the feeling of being stabbed by pins as pain. Maybe one must be crushed by stampeding buffalos for it to count as pain in this country!
Suddenly, it feels more like he is jamming a power drill directly into my tooth, sans anestethic completely. My hand flies up, more tears form in the corners of my eyes. He throws down the drill in frustration.
"It must be infected, that can keep the anesthetic from working." He packs some antibiotic into the tooth, and throws some sort of seal over the whole thing, tells me that the pain will go away in two or three days. Makes an appointment for me on the 22nd, and says, "I don't have time to do a root canal today anyway."
Well why was he fishing around in my tooth with a drill then? This will remain a mystery.

I have trouble understanding what he says when he says how much money I have to give him, and I notice my hands are shaking like a leaf as I hand him the cash.


Cut to later in the evening. I make soup, Travis gets home, we eat, and I joke about my whole left side of my face still being numb. I take two ibuprofen before the numbness wears off, because hey, it hurt before it got bashed for five minues and then drilled open, right? Gradually the feeling returns to my cheek and tongue.
7:20pm: I started to feel a distinct throbbing . I know you can take more ibuprofen then the dose mentions on the bottle, so I take two more.
8:00pm: The anesthetic is pretty much worn off. I can't sit down, can't even stay still. I walk around the apartment sobbing from the pain. We spent the next twenty or thirty minutes on the internet trying to figure out if it would be safe for me to take any more ibuprofen.
8:30pm: I tell Travis to call the emergency dentist number in Belgium, for evening and weekend emergencies. I can't take it anymore. Two or three more days like this? No. Just, no.
8:40pm: No one answers the emergency number. Travis starts calling other emergency medical numbers, tells the story to each person, and gets transferred to someone else each time. I pace, sobbing. The pain is radiating into my neck, my whole mouth, it's like the sun and my whole body is just sort of orbiting around it.
8:43pm: Travis finally gets transferred to the on-call dentist, and she calls in a prescription to a local hospital. He runs out to take the bus there to pick it up for me. I contemplate hurting myself somehow just to get my body to release some more endorphins, and to maybe distract me from my tooth hurting.

The happy ending is Travis, my hero, getting back with some amoxycillin and paracetamol with codeine. I'm also NOT going back to that dentist, we decided. Does anyone know a nice English speaking dentist in Gent who will give me some diazepam? I don't think I'm going into a dentist's office in the near future without it.