Lost in a really big mouth

BECK ELEVEN

I spent two hours of Tuesday afternoon talking while a jolly great wadge of cotton wool was hiding under my tongue.

I didn't even know it was there.

I'm sure this comes from the annals of This Could Only Happen To Me.

About two years ago, I was chewing on a Macintosh toffee, Egg and Cream, I think.

For one, "egg" is a really stupid flavour for a sweet and for two, those toffees can really disrespect a tooth. I lost a big hunk of filling from a rear molar.

I knew I should go to the dentist but sometimes a problem ignored is a problem solved. It got worse on Monday, so I conceded and made a dentist appointment. I was compelled to admit I hadn't sat in a dentist's chair for more than three years.

The advantage of such infrequent appointments is that there are always scientific advances from visit to visit. This time, the drilling seemed less painful and the drugs seemed stronger. Long gone are the primary school days of calling the dental clinic "the murder house".

The weirdest new and painless instrument was this stick-like thing with a bulb of blue light used to harden the filling amalgam.

While the dentist was hosting a blue light dental disco in my mouth, I had time to think.

Having dental work is a most unusual experience because you undergo a great deal of internal work yet you never really know what's going on. You catch glimpses of needles and pokey objects but generally can't feel exactly what they're doing.

And you can never see inside your own mouth, unless you have an out- of-body experience and if that happens in the dental chair, you've got a lot more to worry about than saying "ahhh".

Aside from all the serious work, dentists must spend much of the day secretly laughing at their idiot clients.

"Have a rinse," they say. They really ought to say "have a drool" as you sit up and try to spit in the little sink but instead watch long threads of saliva swirl down the drain while still attached to the sloping corner of your mouth.

And thank goodness I was wearing protective glasses as spray landed gently across my face. I can only assume I was being sprayed with my own spit.

Then they use another probing tool which blows air. I thought it smelled like bad breath but began to realise it was probably blowing the odour of potential gingivitis up my nostrils. Quite frankly, a dental visit is not an exercise in vanity.

I departed with a half numb face. I sat at my desk and immediately checked out the new addition to my mouth. I have this great little mirror that I swapped with another colleague for a pair of gumboots but that's another story to do with the bizarre area of workplace economics.

Anyway, I chatted to my colleagues and told them how weird it felt to have such a numb mouth.

I intermittently bored them with my Weird Lip story for two hours until I took a final look. I made a hook with my finger and drew back my cheek as if it were a fleshy cinema curtain and exposed my new tooth.

In horror, I saw a big white thing looming under my tongue. I dragged out a warm, soggy, barrel-shaped cotton wool wad. The dentist had left it there and I was too numb to notice.

I had effectively been walking around with a petite tampon under my tongue for two hours.

I expected sympathy but my lip- pinching colleague said: "Talk about big mouth, you didn't even know it was there."

- © Fairfax NZ News