Spice Rack

Max needs two, TWO! Fillings next week. I watch some YouTube on nitrous oxide so I can show him what he’s in for. Wow, it sounds AMAZING.

“It’s like this,” I say to Max, “Furby and oo-nai on candy clouds and rainbows!” Max and I are bilingual in English and Furbish. Which will come in real handy when the Furbys take over. Max smiled at this, as Furby dreams are where it’s at.

“You’ll get to pick the scent.”

“We never had scents,” my mother-in-law grumbled. “I hate that smell,” she said, making vomit faces.

When we oldsters start grumbling about how back in our days we had to deal with maximum pain and needles and no one wore seatbelts or cared if we died as long as we were quiet about it, and how kids these days are sensitive little snowflakes—well, we’re just jealous. We weren’t tough, we just didn’t have the same options. And no one really cared how we felt.

I’d be willing to put up with a lot of smell to get to the candy clouds and rainbows.

“And here we have Mr. Whistle,” said the video dentist, picking up his drill. “Mr. Whistle” giggled Max. “What does it sound like?”

“I guess it does kinda sound like a whistle,” I remarked on the sound that strikes fear into everyone. Except Max.

“Well, what do you think,” I said after the video, “can you do that?”

“Nothing on my nose. I don’t want it.”

“But…but…Furby and oo-nai! Candy clouds!”

“’No.”

“But uhhh, if you don’t have the “Happy Gas” they’ll have to numb your mouth with a NEEDLE,” I say, taking the opposite tack.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Nothing on my nose.”

“Really?”

“NO.”

Max left the table and I groaned at my mother-in-law. “He’s not getting through that,” she said.

“Welp, if that doesn’t work he’ll go back in a couple months and they’ll knock him out.”

“With a needle?”

I nodded.

“That’ll go over well.”

I’m gonna need nitrous to get through this. Two breaths for me, two for Max. Candy clouds.

Thank God for anxiety meds. We’ll do our best.

But then, I remember that bribery exists.

“Look, if you go through the whole time at the dentist, and you do exactly what they say, and you wear the thing on your nose…I’ll take you to the Lego store.”

The morning of, Max gets a hydrozyzine. I would have given two, but woke up in the middle of the night thinking “what if that’s too many? What if he dies? Does medicine count as food?” So, one. He wasn’t going to the dentist with nothing in his system.

When we park on the street he gets upset about the parking meter for some reason. He does not want me to put the quarter in.  Oh no, I think, this doesn’t bode well. He asks about meter maids. He asks why there’s parking meters. He asks what happens when you get a parking ticket. Max is a constant questioner, and anxiety ups this pattern.

In the waiting room he takes my phone to build a stoplight in Draw Bricks. I twitch and watch the Smurfs. Why do Smurfs describe everything using the word “Smurf?” It’s so hard to tell what they’re talking about. This anxiety is giving me smurfin’ heart burn.

I am reminded that, in December, I agreed to sealants as well as fillings. It seemed like such a good idea four months ago. Shit. This is going to take forever.

In the room Max does addition out loud, telling us all the ways to make 22, for example. He puts the nose piece on. Victory! It smells like bubblegum. I wouldn’t know, because of course there’s none for nervous moms. Then Max for some reason does not want to pick a movie to watch, but then relents and picks Jurassic World. He’s still talking too much and adding. Does the happy gas not work right? Is he not breathing through his nose? The dentist encourages nice deep breaths, and then puts numbing gel on. When is apparently gross. Max attempts to pull the Q-tip out, but relents. He does NOT pull the needle out of his mouth. Small mercies. He does pull the dental guard out, twice. Each time, the dentist asks him to take some nice deep breaths.

I practice box breathing, since, once again, no nitrous for Mom. In for four…hold for four…out for four…hold for four. My exhales are longer than four. I forget to count. Every so often I grab one of Max’s hands out of the way and put it back on his belly where it’s supposed to be.

The denist nicely, calmly, tells Max how well he’s doing. This is my love language. It feels like my brain is slipping into a bubble bath.

Max’s hands drift toward his face. I make a move to pull then down when the assistant says, “is that Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes?” Yes, the child is humming. And pointing at each part in turn. Gas is working!

The humming changes to “If You’re Happy and You Know It.” There is hand clapping and mild foot stomping. Gas is really super working. I relax and pull out my phone, texting Nick and Max’s teacher song updates in real time.

We roll through “Wheels on the Bus,” and the Alphabet song and the dentist finishes. She turns the oxygen up. The humming returns to mathing. More compliments. More warm mom feelings. Max gets to keep the nose piece as a souvenir of bravery. I get to pay a bill.

I learned, not too well, but mostly ok, that obsessively worrying about the future doesn’t prevent bad things from happening. I’ve never not worried obsessively about the future so I can’t be sure this is true, but, it probably is.  Since having Max I have also learned that optimism about situations doesn’t equate to a plan to get through said situation. Today both the dread and dreaming worked. Although, what really worked, I suspect, is bribery. The allure of Lego is not to be denied.