Nippowned—Dentist

The title, in case you're wondering, refers to me getting pwnd by Japan (Nippon is Japanese for Japan). Credit Bad Attitude Bob for coining the term. Don't let the "part one" fool you into to thinking this is the first time—it's not. This is just part one of the current ownage.

A brief history is necessary before I continue.

Before I came to Japan, I went to the dentist to check out a cracked tooth that I had long ignored. It had started giving me a lot of pain in the weeks before I decided to pay a visit to the friendly neighborhood dentist. I was told I would need a root canal. I had no insurance and no money, so I decided to take the prescribed antibiotics—which knocked out the infection and the pain—and save the root canal for another day.

Fast forward to five months after my arrival in Japan.

The tooth started hurting again—not so bad this time, but I thought it wise to make an appointment. My coworker and Japan concierge, Yayoi, did the leg work, but couldn't find an English speaking dentist in the area. She went ahead and made the appointment, volunteering to take me there and translate.

By the time we went, my tooth was no longer hurting. Still, it needed to be fixed. I made sure to brush and floss really well beforehand, because I know how dentists take that shit personally.

Sitting in that familiar vinyl chair, smelling that familiar, putrid dentist smell, I suddenly felt a bit sorry for the guy; he spends his life trying to help people, heal their pain, and everyone he helps hates him. No wonder dentists all kill themselves.

That wave of empathy would soon pass.

I'm used to having x-rays taken before the examination, but not this time. He just tapped the tooth and said something in Japanese. I assumed he was asking me if he had the right tooth, so I quickly nodded my head yes. Yayoi told me when the dentist left the room that I don't need a root canal because the nerve is still alive—that's why the tooth hurts. It wasn't until later that I thought about how he based his diagnosis on much less than what his American counterpart did, and that when he tapped on my tooth he was probably asking if that hurt, which it didn't, to which I said "yes."

He came back into the room and without warning jammed a giant needle into my gums to administer the novocain. (In actuality he did warn me, I found out later, but Yayoi thought it best to gleefully watch the surprised look on my face.) A few minutes of poking, prodding, and spitting later, and I was set with temporary cap and an appointment to come back two weeks later. I didn't bother to ask what would be happening during my next visit.

All was well—I finished the day, teaching half of my classes with a numb face. They don't understand me either way. I went to bed and woke up the next morning with a sore face. This didn't cause me any concern; I mouth had just been drilled and stretched—a little soreness was to be expected.

The soreness grew into pain and the pain into agony. By my last class of the day, I literally had tears rolling out of my left eye because the pain had radiated up that far. I had already started taking aspirin and ibuprofen, which did a whole lot of nothing.

When I got home I started taking the Vicodin that I smuggled into the country for this very reason. This was to no avail, until about 6 am. when I was finally able to bring the pain down to tolerable. This lasted about an hour, during which I got my only sleep that night, until I was awoken by not only pain, but very unsettling feeling of being detached from myself. I had apparently overmedicated. This was not a "cool, I'm high" feeling. It was more like a "something ain't right and I don't like it at all" feeling.

That eventually wore off as I continued to complain via Facebook about my troubles. I sat around simply bearing the pain until Yayoi called to check on me at about 10 am. I told her I was dying, so she called the dentist and got me in there at 11 o'clock.

Unfortunately, I was on my own this time. The dentist sat me in the now very familiar vinyl chair and explained to me that the pulp in my tooth on my lower jaw was infected needed to be extracted to stop the pain. I responded by saying that it was the tooth on my upper jaw that was causing the pain. Intrigued, he said, "now the pain is upper jaw? Before I give treatment for lower jaw." To which I responded, "no, before you treated my upper jaw." I had to refrain from externalizing this monumental smack-my-head moment.

I know what you're thinking, and yes, this conversation took place in ENGLISH. And the dental assistant also started hitting on me in English when the dentist wasn't around. Those lying bastards!

The end result is me sitting here, typing this with a piece of gauze shoved in the gaping hole that used to be my tooth, and an appointment for July 28. Stay tuned.

Enjoy this likely unrelated quote:

"Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution; 68 percent believe in Satan."

—Sam Harris, The Politics of Ignorance