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So Vain

Posted in Suburban Field Notes by KT
Apr 28 2013

Thanks to the dog, and some bad luck, I have to replace two dental crowns, which are on front teeth,and rather than match that fancy new dental work to my very average looking teeth, the dentist suggested I do a whitening treatment, first, to have a prettier smile. This is great news, because I was just thinking that there is nothing on earth I love more than spending thousands and thousands of dollars on reaffirming my already well-entrenched dental phobia.  Since I am not really the cosmetic enhancing type, I had never done this before, but after we ascertained that I am too dental phobic to get Zoomed, he came up with a home kit.

The instructions alone make me cringe. You put these big green molds in your mouth, then suck on them, to adhere the whitening tape inside them to your teeth, and push the whitening goop up and around each tooth. I was warned my teeth might be a little sensitive afterward. I was not warned that the moment these things went on my teeth I would start to drool like a Dogue de bordeaux. I was not warned that instantly, a giant pool of saliva that I can neither swallow nor actively spit out would form, rendering me instantly disgusting. For 20 minutes, I just sat with my face wrapped in a hand towel, while drool poured out of my mouth, and I moaned in pain. So pretty. So very, very pretty.

The moaning was because I also wasn’t warned about how the hydrogen peroxide in these things would burn. Not in an, “Oh, this isn’t great, but I am adult,and can certainly deal with something unpleasant,” sort of way. More in an, “OH MY GOD MY LIPS ARE BURNING OFF” manner. Apparently, swelling follows the burning part, and now, from the nose down and the chin up, I look like the bastard love child of Lisa Rinna, and a few Real Housewives. It is bad. So bad. I can’t suck water through a straw, or chew without biting something inflamed, or smile.

I should stop, right? But I kept pushing through this crap for 8 applications now, and  I am just at a point where I am just starting to see some whitening, so how can I stop now? Just because my lips are peeling off my face, and the salivary glands under my tongue is so swollen I can’t swallow anything, and my gums are bleeding, and I sort of want to cry every time I take one of these kits out of the fridge, that is no excuse for quitting, right? What am I, some sort of quitter? Some sort of quitter who would privilege the ability to eat and talk over the having of slightly whiter teeth?

I am no quitter. I might be a hideous-lipped beast right now, a complete horror-fest, face-wise, but I am no quitter. And if it takes looking this bad for weeks on end, just for an end result of looking slightly better, well, that seems like a perfectly logical course of action. Because I am an idiot.

 

 

Tagged as: dentist, first world problems, pain
April 2013
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