Toofies and Waterworks

As a prelude to my dental appointment last week, I was thinking back to my first dentist in Montreal: Dr Cloutier, probably in 1955.  It was a one-person operation. You'd walk it, sit in the chair; he examined your teeth, and started to drill – without freezing, may I add. That's the way that it was. I was 7, and they were baby teeth, and I don't remember the process being unduly torturous. Perhaps time has been merciful and mitigated my memory.

Nowadays they are major businesses. This one involved the dentist plus 6 others as far as I could tell. There were sometimes two at the main desk – one to take your money, and one to pick you up off the floor. Let's say that the bill was flabbergasting.

I must say that it was painless, but after an hour and a half in that chair my old body was feeling less than happy, let me tell ya. I had to halt the proceeding and get up to stretch. Shortly thereafter, I had to suspend work again while I left the dentist and technician sitting in the room for a few moments whilst I visited the loo.

My body puzzles me and drives me to distraction. I took the first appointment: 8am. Knowing my body. I refrained from drinking all night, I didn't have my morning coffee despite getting up two hours earlier. I had gotten up twice during the night, and then I went twice before going to the dentist. When I got there I went again, just for good measure.

I thought that there wouldn't be a drop of water left in me after more than 12  hours without fluids, but after 90 minutes in the chair, I felt ready to burst. You would think that it might have just been my mind playing tricks on me at that point, but I am telling you that it was pretty well a gusher and not just the few paltry drops that I had been expecting. Where all of that came from after all of those hours of depriving myself of fluids is beyond me.

But listen to this: I went again as soon as I got home, not much more than a half hour later. I'm sorry, but I have to utter a hearty and perplexed WTF? right about now.

It had been a fairly major appointment. After not visiting a dentist for two and a half, mostly COVID years, I had developed 4 cavities around old fillings, and I had to also deal with the chipped tooth that I had lived with for more that three years. Amazingly, there wasn't a cavity in that tooth, which is what I had been most concerned about.

In future, I will break it up into two appointments should I ever again require than much work. But I shouldn't have this happen again once I get back to regular checkups, for this amount of maintenance is unusual for me, Thank goodness.

Now, I feel that I must work one more thing into this post that is related in an odd way.

I have been wearing my iWatch to bed on most nights for the two-and-a -half months that I have had it primarily in order to use a sleep app. I don't need to do this, for I am not too stupid to figure out how many hours that I have slept. But it also tracks heart beat and how much it drops as well as sleep rhythm. Those two things – resting heart rate and sleep rhythm – may be the same thing. I am not sure right now, and it doesn't matter.

To get to the point, an hour or so after my appointment, I dropped Sue off briefly so she could make an appointment with her hairdresser. While she was inside, I checked my sleep app, or maybe it sent me a message. I can't remember which.

Guess what?

Since I had been all but stationary in the dental chair for a protracted period of time, the app had added the two hours to my sleep time. That is despite the fact that I had gotten up two hours prior to the appointment and then driven the office. 

And that's all I have to say about that. I thought it might tickle you, however.