Reflections from the Dental Chair

Flossing CAN be bad for you!
I should know.
One thing led to another and ultimately I was one less filling than I had been two seconds before. Yuck. Grody. This wasn't happening, I hoped. Who cared about the stupid Super Bowl game anyway. With my escalating status of freaking out, I glanced over at Nick who had this rabid dog, vulture-ish look on his face that was mixed with empathetic reassurance. He knew. I knew. It would have to be fixed, and he could now fix it! One good thing...it wasn't hurting. I would make it until the morning. In all of my wildest dreams, I absolutely NEVER (ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER) pictured my knight in shining armor coming in the form of a dentist with really sharp, pointy things, begloved, and decked out in surgical garb. Ever.
There was no doubt that I wanted Nick to fix my tooth, though. He finagled a plan with a dean, professors, and the school clinic to get me swapped on the schedule with a mannequin that he would've otherwise been working on. Two timer! HA! Come to find out, I would be the only human patient for anyone in that clinic that day--me and a bunch of dummies--YAY for ME!
I will always say that I would rather give birth than be in a dental chair. For Nick to have me as his first human guinea pig, to manage my anxiety (Me? Anxiety?), to have to focus on a SUPER complicated filling repair (according to me, it was darn near life threatening), and stay composed--the man is my hero!
In between all of the injections and gawd-awful drill noises, dropping the pokey things down my throat (HA! Nope, just kidding), setting tooth clamps and wedge placements, scraping and spooning (not as in a cereal spoon, I quickly learned), there were moments that I would just watch him. I could see corners of his eyes poking around from behind the magnifying loupes. Those are the same eyes that I looked into on the day we started dating, the day we became husband and wife, and the days our boys were born. Yes, my knight in shining armor comes with dental surgical garb and wickedly pokey instruments. But, I just cannot express in words how proud of him I am.