Dental infamy.

The other day I went to our family dentist for a replacement of a nasty old silver filling with a beautiful white porcelain cap that blends in perfectly with ... my other nasty old silver fillings.

My dentist is young and cute and happily married, although my parents think, based on the way he's asked them about me during their own toothy visits, that he has a crush on me – or so they like to say. I think they're mistaking his friendly patient relationship-building for something else. It's all moot, anyway.

He and his wife just had a baby, as was mentioned in the course of discussions about my own little reason not to have X-rays taken. "Born five days after his cousin – my brother's son," he added.

"Oh, how wonderful!" I exclaimed, operating for social acceptance purposes on the socially accepted assumption that all baby news should indeed be considered wonderful. "Who told the family first, and what did the other brother do, just raise his hand and add, 'Um, me too'?"

"Well, no. He told us first, right after they found out. We didn't know yet, about ourselves. We'd been trying for a long time and they hadn't. Until we found out that my wife was pregnant too, it was ... bittersweet."

It was the first time I'd heard a man admit such a thing.

***

And then I threw up on him.

The day before, I'd been sitting on the couch and was all of a sudden overtaken with the feeling that I was going to faint. I stood up to head towards bed (mistake) and collapsed. Coming to, I vomited without even having warning that I was going to and then began hyperventilating, my body hot and clammy, my limbs tingling. All in all, it only lasted a few minutes, but all in all, it was rather unpleasant.

I took a two-hour nap and felt fine afterwards and so chalked the incident up to random pregnancy bizarreness.

Then it happened again while I was in the dental chair, drill in my mouth until hastily retrieved. Once I'd recovered a bit, they took my blood pressure – low at 80-something over 40-something.

Post-dental-appointment self-diagnosis, later confirmed: vasovagal syncope. Cause: pregnancy. Treatment: uhhh ... giving birth? And not sitting still in one place for too long.

***

The incident was more than slightly humiliating and no doubt will put an end to what has been misinterpreted by my family as dentist crush-speak. Never mind. I was his first; he'd never had a puking patient before. Surely that level of infamy is worth the price of pride.

not him ... or me.
borrowed ethically from source