First off I will say that I have a great dentist, I'd recommend him to anyone. I had to get a broken crown fixed, so I went to his office a little early for my 4:00 p.m. appointment and was whisked straight in to a chair before I could even take off my jacket. The assistant pinned a bib around my neck and Cooper comes in, says Howyadoin?, sits down, pulls out a drill, says Turn toward me a little, and starts drilling my tooth! No novocaine, no reassurance, no nothing. I was like, Hey! Stop it! Which is hard to do with a whirring drill inside your mouth threatening to turn your tongue into hamburger. So he stops, and looks at me patiently, and finally says, It's a nonvital tooth, you won't feel anything, but that light's pretty bright, here's a pair of sunglasses. So I sat there wearing old scratched-up sunglasses while he broke up my old crown with what felt like a jackhammer. Every time a new chunk broke off he'd say, Don't swallow! and he'd reach in with little forceps and fish another piece of porcelain out from under my tongue.
But he's fast. I had a temporary tooth in no time, and an appointment for the replacement crown in two weeks (gold this time -- apparently I bite too hard for porcelain). Then I spent fifteen minutes talking to Brooke, a dental assistant who had her baby the day after Jackson came. Whenever I'm swapping birth stories I always try not to get self-righteous about the fact that my labor was relatively quick (six hours) and that we did the whole thing at home, safely and quietly (well, again, relatively quietly). Brooke, on the other hand, was in labor for thirty hours and after all that had a c-section. She's forty pounds overweight and she's ready to do it all over again! The confidence of some women just amazes me.