As with many things in my life, I don't really want to know the details, just what I need to do. Today I went to my dentist where he proceeded to do something with my teeth. Two teeth, one of my top-right-middle teeth and my bottom-right- back molar were apparently a bit chipped. Four months ago Dr Dowd said something about those two teeth being too uneven so that it's easier for plaque to build up and tooth decay to set in. To which, in retrospect, I should have replied that since I have my teeth cleaned every four months there won't be time for plaque to build up.

So there I was lying there on the patient's chair, staring up at the overhead light and Dr Dowd and the nurse, wearing masks so they wouldn't get any of my cooties. Before that my mouth was swabbed with something to make it a bit numb, then some real anesthetic was injected next to the teeth to be worked on. The right side of my face and tongue are almost numb. But I can still feel some pain when he starts drilling on my back molar.

It's a strange sensation when the nerve ending of a tooth is bothered. Not a sharp pain, but strong nevertheless. I let out an involuntary moan and Dr Dowd mentions that anesthetizing the back teeth is less effective. Ok, thanks for warning me. Now that I know I try to bear the pain silently. When he drills the front tooth I don't feel that at all.

Now, I don't know what he's doing or even what the tool looks like. I can hear the shrill whine like a drill and hear it as it grinds my teeth. I can feel it brushing in my mouth but there is no pain. I guess he's evening it out so he can apply the glue and some silver (the front tooth gets some sort of compound instead that is more tooth colored).

It's really disconcerting when one of the tools is hot or something. I can see wisps of smoke coming out of my mouth and the nurse blows some cool air in there to cool it down, though I fortunately still don't feel any pain. It would be really nice if Dr Dowd told me what he was going to do, or was doing and why. He's a new doctor, taking over for Dr Satre who retired early this year, and I guess he still needs to work on his bedside manner. He just doesn't seem as friendly.

I can contrast his manner with Dr Satre who was much more talktative and approachable. Or to the orthodontist that did my root canal, he explained the whole procedure and why it needed to be done and explained what was going on as anything unusual came up. That helped make the root canal a lot less scary and calmed me down. Today's operation was not very relaxing.

In any case, it only took a little over an hour and then I was done. Then Chris cleaned my teeth and I was on my merry way. The first day those teeth were a bit sore. I couldn't chew on them and they were quite sensitive to cold, like cold tap water for instance. A day and a half later and I can chew on them more or less, maybe nothing really hard. Still a bit sensitive to cold. And it feels a bit funny when I chomp my teeth, like I have something stuck on top of my teeth.

Maybe I won't notice later on, but I don't really think was necessary at all. Dr Dowd saw my teeth once and decided to do this, whereas Dr Satre did not mention it the two or three times that I visited him. Brushing my teeth with the electric tooth brush and getting my teeth cleaned three times a year should have been sufficient to cover me. It's not as if plaque would build up and decay my teeth without the dentist noticing. For some reason I get the impression that he was practicing on me.