I’ve made no secret of my love for dentists, but I can’t deny that the quality of the dentist varies greatly. Today, in the midst of all the coronavirus isolation (which has not been mandated in Sweden completely), a tooth that has given me nothing but pain since I was 19 started throbbing. In the throes of a full infection where my many-times-repeated root canal had been done, I coped with the pain for a day before finally breaking down and going to an emergency dentist.

The pain was finally too much to bear, and in my experience, seeing the dentist almost always alleviates the pain immediately. For this reason I love dentists. This time, though, it’s very infected, it is a complicated tooth and roots, and no amount of anesthetic injection would make the thing numb. I must have had ten shots, and my whole head was numb. But the pain from that tooth continued. The crown and root filling (and infection) removal was also excruciating.

It’s not an ideal time for exposing oneself to healthcare workers, of course. And no, they did not perform rogue maskless dentistry, as I have written in the title. This was just a joke with someone else about a dentist I used to know. But in these times, masks and the like are at a shortage. Seems a shame to have to have wasted any on me and my teeth.