PAIN –ALYSIS

For the past fornight (and still continuing) the dominant sensation in my life has been TOOTHACHE. Make that TEETHache, gumache, jawache, cheekache, earache…

I have never really realised the ease and ruthlessness with which pain can have us at its mercy – striking anytime, beginning its offensive slowly and then swiftly building-up the intensity till very soon all you are aware of is the sheer THROB of pain.

Pain makes you self-centred, distracting you totally from any other work you may have at hand, making you run away from social encounters where you have to smile and make small talk, even making you treat your loved ones in an impatient, ill-tempered way. All you want to do is curl up and cry – just the two of you, you and the pain, till it loosens its grip and lets you go.

It is all very well for the dentist/doctor to be analytical about your pain. He will tap here and probe there, asking you where the pain is more and where it is less. He will try to track its growth, asking you when it begun , where it originated, and other difficult-to-remember questions, because by the time the pain has spread its tentacles, your suffering mind is too confused to dissect and discuss it impersonally.

The only relief in these dark days have been the tiny pill of hope – the trusty but tardy pain-killers. As the pain-slaught increases, you reach for the oval pill and swallow it, skimming semi-consciously through the next hour or so, till the analgesic does its job and the waves of pain recede for a few hours. Till the next tidal torture wave.

One silver lining, though: My two daughters have got really scared of toothaches and are washing their mouths diligently after every meal and brushing their teeth with a precautionary thoroughness which gives me some amount of satisfaction.

DENTIST AT WORK: TEETH UNDER CONTRUCTION

I really am fed up to my teeth about my, well, teeth (or whatever remains of them). I’m a veteran visitor at the dentist’s, and I’m sure he’s planning an academic research paper on the subject of my teeth.

Various kinds of civil construction work continue to take place inside my mouth, leaving me feeling distinctly uncivil.

I’ve had root canals, metal crowns, ceramic crowns (in the inverted world of dental logic, steel crowns are more expensive than gold crowns, and ceramic ones are the costliest – figure that out), bridges and other architectural marvels in my mouth. Does that make me a big-mouth? I shudder to think what my real teeth look like under all that reconstruction. A bomb-hit, devastated, charred-and-filed to bits archaeological ruins of what was once a white and wince-free city?

I’ve had two wisdom teeth taken out. The remaining two should, by definition, make me a half-wit.

And now, I’ve got to go for another bridge-work, adding to the existing two. With the number of canals and bridges that I have, I sometimes feel like an oral replica of the city of Venice (and here I was hoping to be a Venus with a perfect smile).

So, there I’ll be again – in the dentist’s scary-chair, open-mouthed and resigned to my fate, wincing at the drill and blinking at the light. Oh, for the toothless joys of infancy/old age! Maybe, that is much less painful than the ruthless re-shaping of my dental geography.