I know it's cliche, but it happened

Today I had to get a bit of dental work done. My teeth have long let me know that they'd prefer to be cavity riddled and sensitive despite my efforts to keep them happy with brushing and flossing. So, I had two fillings today, on teeth 30 and 31 (or whatever the last two numbers are).

Everyone knows that these days, (thankfully), fillings are done with a lot of novacaine. And novacaine is great; I love it. Don't get me wrong. I will gladly take a pinch of pain to the mouth to avoid the pain of drilling later. But the side effects!

For those of you who have not had to get multiple fillings, well, first off, I'm jealous. More importantly, you might not know that there's this nerve in the back of your mouth and dentists aim for it when they need to numb the bottom back of your mouth. It is a good thing when they get it, but it does mean that half of your face will feel numb. I kept checking to make sure my glasses hadn't fallen off my face because I was numb up to my ear.

I can't stress enough how much of a good thing it is to be numb during dental work. But then, afterwards, that's when it seems like less of a good thing.

Like when you go with your husband to Kohls afterwards to see if any good maternity clothes are on clearance. And when he tells you to go ahead and go upstairs because he's going to grab a new wallet and meet you there. And so you go upstairs and decide to get a drink. But because half your mouth is still numb, specifically the half that is closest to the water spigot on the drinking fountain, getting a drink of water becomes an exercise in futility. And because your mouth is half numb, you can't swallow the water properly and you can't spit it out, and it ends up coming out of your nose, which is somewhat painful.

The somewhat painful sensation of water coming out of your nose might make you cough, which might make a nearby employee come over to make sure that you are alright. And then you might try to assure her that you are fine, only to find that the novacaine is wearing off just enough to make forming words next to impossible. And so you try to cough to cover up the fact that you sound like you're slightly mentally incapacitated. And then realize that coughing more is not going to get the employee to think you're alright, so you try to cough and talk at the same time so the employee will think that you are merely choking on water that went down the wrong pipe instead of thinking that you are unable to form words or drink water.

Thankfully, I think it kind of worked. The employee kind of glanced at me, and then at my pregnant form and then there was a sort of mental shrug in her eyes. I smiled, hoping that both corners of my mouth were working enough to convince her that I wasn't also a victim of a stroke, and casually hurried into the bathroom to continue coughing.

I'm doing much better now, hours later. My dear husband even drove me to DQ for ice cream, at my insistence. And the dentist said there's only a small chance that I'll need a root canal on my back tooth in the future.

...

I just want to take a moment to insist that I do, in fact, brush my teeth at least twice a day and floss almost daily. I have a package of floss in my purse to facilitate this. I drink orange juice with calcium since I don't like milk and eat yogurt and cottage cheese. I am unsure why my teeth hate me.

And that's the story of how at least two Kohls employees think that a somewhat "special" pregnant individual visited their store today.