While I don't harbor the stereotypical fear/dread/ire for dentists that we seem to have in the cultural imagination, I have found myself in a situation that was at different times a combination of bad insurance, a previous huckster dental practice and sheer laziness, been to the dentist about three times in the last, oh, say, eleven years.

I should not have been surprised, therefore, to find out that I have four cavities. I further should not have been surprised that getting four cavities filled in one evening would, well, hurt. Like so much hades.

Yes, I got novocaine shots, and I suspect part of the lingering pain in my gums is actually from the injections. But the rest of it comes from the sheer jarring effect of having someone drill out pieces of my teeth.

Now, I'd like to give a shout-out to the Drs. McCarl, a nifty little small-town style family practice in old Greenbelt that Dave and Natalie recommend highly. They run a very friendly practice, and I have not once been offered a fairly expensive tooth whitening process. Instead I've been told a lot about floss, a product for which I expect the dentitsts get very little kickback.

Still. My mouth hurts.