Through Clenched Teeth

The pain came out of the blue like a pointed stick impaling her through the right side of her face. She wasn't even eating anything hard. No nuts or un pitted olives and dates. No rock candy. Overcooked reheated rice pasta with pesto, kale and mushy chickpeas. A soft, chewy mess of green that melted in her mouth until suddenly it felt as if she chomped down on a pebble. The searing pain right in the centre of her largest molar. Yesterday she finally went in for a cleaning. After a year and a half of  procrastinating Felicia bit the bullet and went to her dentist for the full meal deal only to get a perfect bill of health. Her hygienist praised her good work and attention to detail. She felt like an 8 year old with the prize winning cake at the bake sale. So proud. Now she's paranoid. Did something shift during all of that scraping and poking? The instruments are so invasive- high pressured water sprayers, grinders, scalers. Maybe the dentist poked a hole in something or shifted her bite with the sealant on the opposite side of her mouth. Felicia loves her dentist and all the assistants and support staff, she truly does. Every christmas she makes care baskets and splurges on individual cards with personalized messages. Since smashing her two front teeth as a child while doing pushups on a wet pool deck she's dreaded anyone poking around in her mouth. Three years later the dentist in charge of cleaning up and filing down her broken front teeth decided Felicia didn't need novocaine while he took a drill to her exposed nerves so her eleven year old self hurled every invective her electrified self could muster while being physically restrained by the terrified intern in the room. So was born her sense of righteous indignation. When she finally saw Marathon Man ten years laters she had flashbacks of PTSD proportion. Tooth pain is not ok in Felicia's world. She'll give it a day, lots of smoothies and open mouth breathing, avoiding any contact between upper and lower jaws. There's a reason she rarely eats pasta. Not a fan of carb loading unless she's racing. Who knew it would wreak havoc on her latent tooth anxiety.

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