Teeth Cleaning - Redux

I don't know about you, but I sure love not being able to feel the side of my face. As I write these words, I have absolutely no feeling in the left side of my face. I bite on my inner cheek (something the dentist told me not to do) and feel nothing. Nothing at all. It's pretty great.

Here is how this happened:

I went back across the street to the dentist in order to get a "cavity filled". (The dentist is across the street from my apartment. How convenient. And scary.) Now, I don't exactly now what getting a cavity filled means, but I do know that it involves, at first, injecting a lot of novacaine into the left side of my face.

Only problem is, the novacaine, or whatever it was, didn't really do anything. And so, when the dentist asked me if I could feel my tongue when I bit it, I said yes.

"Are you sure?" she said.
"Pretty sure," I said, feeling a searing pain flash through my mouth.
"Well," the dentist said, "I think I'm just going to go ahead with the procedure anyway"

So it was, that I got to have my cavity taken out, or put in, or whatever they do with cavities these days, without the benefits of novacaine. Needless to say, it wasn't the most pleasant experience.

On the plus side, the dentist who was doing the job was very sympathetic. "I'm really sorry," she kept saying, as I screamed through the sounds of the drilling of my enamel (or whatever it is they put on teeth these days).

Then, when the procedure was over, and my cavity was magically healed, I got up. Suddenly, I realized I couldn't feel the left side of my face.

"You might feel a little numb later", the dentist said.
"I'm way ahead of you," I replied.

And so, I, now, get to bite really hard down onto my tongue and not feel a thing. Is that blood, I wonder? Gotta run...