I'd almost forgotten, missed it, but - an appointment with the dentist. A cleaning, long, long overdue.
How bad can it be, given everything else I've been through?
Pretty fucking bad. 2 Hours in the chair, alternately clutching my fists, the water jets, high pitched whine, vibration, not so much pain as immense discomfort. Little flashes of pain, where the water travels up a nerve or hits something just right. After an hour of this I'm done, but she isn't. Now for the manual tooth-scraping of plaque, build-up, tarter, and this for another hour, and I'm so done, past done, it's exhausting this, hours of edge-of-your seat discomfort, brightened only by the "I knew it" flashes of pain, fucking hell, she's battling every surviving tooth in my mouth. At the two-hour mark my time is up, she estimates another hour to go - fucking bloody hell, then brightly suggests an appointment the next day - and it's "NONONO", I need fucking time to recover, go home, watch "Marathon Man" and "Little Shop of Horrors" and "Brazil", realize how lucky I have it, only, only, I'm not feeling so lucky...