Friday, November 09, 2007

Mouths and irony and aluminum foilishness

My mouth tastes metallic.

This started night before last – I was eating dinner, a lovely turkey kielbasa all spicy and good, and I kept thinking “this kielbasa is not quite right.” But then neither was the Red Delicious apple, later that night, nor the cookie right before midnight. Nor any food I’ve had since then. It all starts off tasty goodness, but when it gets to the back of the mouth it goes all bad. Like it’s been dipped in aluminum foil.

So at first I treated this possible medical concern with my same normal process, which is a combination of ignoring and procrastination which can run anywhere from a few months to 4 years (and counting!) Initially I was working on the tried and true “I’m sure it’s nothing, it’s temporary and it will go away. See, that last bite tasted a little better, didn’t it?... gleh.” You can do that for some things for quite a while, such as excrutiating pain, but not so much when it’s ruining every single thing you eat.

So that pushed things to the next level a little quicker then normal. I next did that thing that anyone who’s been hanging out on the internet for more then six months already KNOWS you should never do, and that’s go do my favorite medical expert, Dr. Google. He’s friendly, he’s full of info and he’s always available! What’s not to love? So according to Dr. Google I’m apparently suffering from cancerous post nasal drippy taste buds with infected mouth batteries. So no worries there.

Of the 83 gajillion possible things that could leave a metallic taste in my mouth my favorites were these:
1. That 2 fillings of 2 different alloys in my mouth have somehow combined to create a battery. I’ll test that theory by sucking on a sparking Wint-o-green Life Saver and see if my head explodes!
2. That the taste buds at the front of my tongue were damaged, causing my crappy back-of-the-tongue taste buds to step up. Which are crappy. Leading to crappy tastes.

Last night I think I noticed that a filling at the back of my mouth, which I think I got when I was still breast feeding (in other words, it’s super-old), isn’t looking so good. Even for a filling. So now I’m thinking this is less a medical problem (which is too bad, because you can’t swing a dead domestic-animal-of-your-choice in my new job without hitting a doctor) and more a dental problem (swing all the cats you want, you’ll only hit a dentist if they’re in here being treated for their own health crappiness.)

Tangent: I hate dentists. Seriously I do. No, I don’t mean “oh gosh, I sure do hate going to the dentist. Gee and also darn.” And a playful punch in the arm. No, I mean “For the love of god, I can live with this pain of the infected, impacted, inflamed and possibly radioactive wisdom teeth! Just don’t make me go to the dentist please because if you do I’ll have to KILL EVERYBODY!!!” And a playful loading of my gun. I will get teary-eyed sitting in the lobby not reading Highlights and the waterworks flow freely during a teeth cleaning. Which, I might add, FREAKS OUT THE CLEANER-PEOPLE. There is no amount of warning ahead of time that will prepare them for the tears, and then they need to know if there’s anything at all they could do to make me feel better? Anything? Anything? Puh-LEASE??? To which all I can suggest is that they quit their job and become a baker or lion tamer or anything that isn’t dental in nature. Which wouldn’t really help me right there, because then someone else would just have to take over, and are you seeing the problem here yet? So any time the solution to a problem is “go to the dentist” I don’t so much see it as a solution as much as a massive, terrifying escalation of the previous problem.

Even so, I called my dentist. Oh, and here’s the other thing about that: I really like my dentist. Don’t get confused, I do hate “dentists” as a category of profession/torturer, but I really like the guy who happens to be my personal dentist. As dentists go, he’s a peach! He’s funny and he explains everything with just the right amount of detail (because really, there is a point at which I don’t need to know that much about the evil you’re about to do in my mouth, people!) and he gets my fears. He won’t freak or beg me to stop or offer a solution. He just puts his great, big dental hand on my shoulder and gives it a warm, “I wish you weren’t at the dentist either.” Squeeze.

The only thing I don’t like about my dentist is this: he’s closed on Fridays. I should remember this, too, because I swear to you that every dental thing that has ever popped up in my entire life has always done so, without fail, on a Friday. And because he’s not there it means that I always, also without fail, have to suffer through the entire weekend with whatever new miracle of agony my mouth has come up with. It’s the cute little irony-joke my mouth plays on me, so that I remember to be nice to it.

So now I get to spend the weekend not enjoying any food. Which is depressing. And you know what I like to do to cheer myself up when I’m depressed? EAT.

Stupid mouth irony.

No comments: