A Brief Dental History
After weeks of anguish we return to our dentist’s office. We take our dog.
Our jolly dentist receives us, and immediately straps us into his plush electric chair, tips us back so our head is against floor and our feet pointed at the stars. Our dentist re-takes our history.
It’s our old complaint, rearing its ugly head — ringing in our ears.
Yes, yes, consoles our New Age dentist, ear ringing is linked to the way our teeth mash together. Excessive mashing inflaming our brain parts or something … body’s only defense: Ring our Ears. Advice: learn to laugh, get rid of tension.
Can’t, we say. Too tense from ear ringing.
Clothes removed, both dog and self are inspected.
Our dentist probes and presses various parts of our body. He wonders why we are not circumcised.
Could that be the reason why our ears ring, we wonder?
Laughter and much chuckling from our dentist.
Our dentist looks at our dog’s incisors, pronounces them sound, then asks when our ear ringing became unmanageable.
Since we got our dog. Barking upsets us, causes our ears to ring more than they ever did.
Our dentist wants to know why we got our dog.
Our dentist is reminded he prescribed our dog to relax our teeth so they would not mash in our head.
Nothing to worry about muses our dentist, drawing blood samples from both our dog and self.
Various solutions to ringing in our ears are proposed. Full extraction of teeth in both self and our dog contemplated. Partial extraction in which only our teeth are removed. All of this considered and rejected by our learned dentist. We can hardly hear our learned dentist because of jet engines blasting each of our ears.
Our dentist suggests we send our dog to the pound. We cannot, we have grown too attached to our little devil.
Ah, ha! Our dentist has a perfect solution: a New Age plastic splint.
Only a paltry thousand dollars.
The splint is a thin plastic thingamajig held in our mouth, stops our teeth from mashing. This will cause our brain parts to calm down, our ear ringing guaranteed to stop.
Impressions taken — using bitter blue foam designed to gag us.
A week later revolutionary plastic splint jammed in our mouth. Impossible now to mash our teeth.
Our dentist says we must sleep with plastic splint.
That night we fall asleep with use of powerful sedatives.
Our dog, ever cunning, steals splint out of our mouth, tries it on for size. Won’t fit. Our dog, annoyed, eats about half of our splint.
Ringing like sound of Titanic going down in each ear wakes us.
Partially consumed splint will not fit back in our mouth and our dog demands rest of our splint back. We surrender New Age splint to our dog.
Irritation grows in us.
Our brain parts swelling.
Our head feels like inside of Saint Peter’s Cathedral with all bells echoing in clapper fight.
We return to our dentist.
Our head placed at floor level, feet pointed at stars.
Our dentist revisits our history again.
His new solution: make two splints. One for us and one for our dog. This way our dog will leave our splint in our mouth.
In desperation, as a thousand Atlas rockets blast off in our ears, we agree to twin splints.
Our dentist collects two thousand dollars.
Our dentist takes another impression of our mouth.
Our jolly dentist inserts blue impression foam in our dog’s mouth. Our dog growls. Our dentist says this won’t hurt. Our dog bites dentist. Our dentist screams.
We begin to laugh uncontrollably. Our dentist continues screaming.
Our inflamed brain parts calm down.
Our ear ringing lessens, then miracle of miracle, stops. Laughter – best medicine.
