[Editor’s Note: Halloween is a time for horrors… but the most horrifying experiences are often those that occur in every day life. Like for example, the horror of dentistry. Get ready to shake in terror upon reading this true life tale of dental-related horror in an anthology we like to call… THE TELL TALE TOOTH. Enjoy. (Insert cackling laughter here.)]
When I was 27, I finally got dental insurance through my job after not having coverage for years. If you’ve been there, you know where this is going: I had to go to the dentist. I have a lot of dental trauma from years of orthodontia nightmares in my teens, which included things like projectile vomiting on my orthodontist and his serial-killer glasses during a particularly harrowing retainer fitting, and sleeping in a medieval torture device to fix my overbite.
Coverage issues aside, I hadn’t had much motivation to go to the dentist. Nothing good has ever happened to me there, and if something has always been an invasive ordeal, you’re not going to be excited about it. But now there was no getting around it: I had insurance, and I would have to go. So I did. The X-ray bitewings triggered my gag reflex, the cleaning made my gums bleed, and I took it very personally when the hygienist gave nearly all of my teeth embarrassingly poor ratings on a scale of 1-4. But the worst was yet to come: In came my new dentist, who looked like he was about 12 years old, and he had terrible news. I had six cavities. SIX. CAVITIES. And I would have to get all of them filled. I felt like I should be starring in a cautionary PSA: Megan didn’t think she had to go to the dentist. Now she’s almost 30 and has six cavities. Don’t be like Megan!