The Monkey Exhibit

My dentist’s name is Mark. The office calls him Dr. Mark. He does have a last name, but I guess we’re just a tight knit community. Today I had an appointment with Dr. Mark to fix some decay under one of my fillings. While I was there I wanted him to check an extremely sensitive spot I had on a tooth beside my ex-wisdom tooth. When I drink something hot or cold, the spot shoots excruciating pain up my tooth deep into my gums. Other times when I eat some foods (I’ve noticed chocolate as the biggest offender) the whole upper right side of my jaw throbs in pain. I’ve given it two months to heal over since my wisdom teeth extraction so I figured it was time to get it taken care of.

Dr Mark first thought some ‘fluoride varnish’ was the answer and began poking around with a “sponge on a stick” (I asked if this was the technical term for it and he just laughed). He found an indentation on the very back side of my last upper tooth in a spot VERY hard to reach, even by a professional. He then decided that he wanted to fill in the spot with the same filling material he was using to re-fill my other tooth. Dr Mark said the top filling was going in a difficult space and he wasn’t sure if it would last.

I left the dentist office with a very numb face. All I could picture was the dental assistant and Dr. Mark standing side by side waving as I left. The assistant, of course, would be asking “Do you think it will work?” Dr. Mark’s only appropriate response would be “it’ll take a miracle.”