My Face Hurts < Wistful SIgh > Ah, The Springtime Of My Youth

So, I have bad teeth. Not rotting, falling out of my head teeth or British bad teeth, just neglected and cavity ridden teeth, complicated by the fact that up until 3 years ago, I haven't had dental insurance since I left college. Anyway, my teeth need a lot of expensive work, and it's an ongoing process. A couple of months ago, my dentist started working on my third root canal, and as I was laying there in the chair, he looked like he was really working hard, lots of drilling and scraping. At some point he stops and starts to clean up, and I thought he was done, since he put in a temporary filling. Nope, as it turns out, I had a freak tooth with 5 canals, and he couldn't for the life of him get to the final canal. I admire that actually, knowing your limits and when to stop. I usually hate dentists, but Dr. Adelman I like, even though I neglect my teeth and get lectured constantly about taking better care of them.
Anyway, Dr. Adelman strongly recommends that I go see a specialist and let him take care of it. Of course, he makes the mistake of saying that there's no hury, so I don't make an appointment right away, in fact, I don't make one until last week, after I've seen the dental hygienist for my biannual cleaning. And I probably might have waited longer, if it hadn't started to bother me a bit.
So I go see the specialist and so it begins again, though this time, there's a special twist that makes the ordeal remarkably more bearable. Dr. Schoengold uses a dental dam to keep the area he's working on as sterile as possible, which means surgical latex.
Now, I have a poor sense of smell from years of clogged sinuses and allergies. I have to be nearly up against something to be able to smell it properly, unless it's an really, really, strong scent. And since, just like the commercial says, smell is the strongest sense associated with memory, the smell of latex up in my face, brought back some pleasant memories. So, I ended up reminiscing as Dr. Schoengold drilled, scraped, drilled, scraped and drilled and scraped some more.
An hour later, though, after the novocaine wore off, it was difficult to chew without a great amount of discomfort. And it annoyed for the rest of the day. Hopefully, tomorrow, it'll be less annoying.
I go back next week for him to finish up. ;)