Sheryl Crow Will Take Your Mind Away

The dental assistant reclined the dental chair, and I immediately began to think about Switzerland.  Chalets.  Heidi.  Cow bells.  Cheese.  Alpenhorns.  That is when I realized the power of distraction.

Lying in the dental chair, I was staring up at a photo of Switzerland cut out of an old calendar.  Someone had taped it on the ceiling to distract me.  

To distract me from the dental procedure I was about to undergo.  Yes, I was under anesthesia, but the photo was meant to take my mind out of the dental office to someplace far away so I would not focus on what was happening inside my mouth. 

Distraction was another form of anesthesia; it worked.

Then I went to a new dentist, who did not have a photo of Switzerland on the ceiling.  I needed to find something to distract me.  The hardest part of a dental procedure for me is ignoring the sound of the drill.  I fear what I hear; so, I brought a Walkman with me and played tapes while the dentist drilled away.  Sheryl Crow's music took my mind away.

The Walkman morphed into an iPod.  Sheryl Crow continued to take my mind away, helping me through 32 cancer treatments, distracting me from the sound of the machine that shot radiation into me.

My iPod helped me every time I needed it --- until I got a tooth extracted a couple of weeks ago.  On the “Universal Tooth Numbering System”, it was tooth #18.  It was rotten; it needed to go. 

I was ready for the extraction:  

1. The dental surgeon had pumped my bloodstream with Novacaine

 2. The dental surgeon had pumped my lungs with wonder-working nitrous oxide (apparently, no one calls it laughing gas any more).

3. My headphones and iPod were ready to distract me.

The dental chair reclined.  Suddenly my iPod music sounded faint.  I tried fiddling with the iPod --- something not easy to do when you are numbed and gassed and lying horizontal.  I swirled the iPod wheel; I pressed the center button.  The music was still faint.

The drill was not faint.  It made a racket as it ground through tooth enamel.

The dentist’s voice, however, was louder than the drill:  “This is a nasty one.”  “The tooth is fighting me.”  “This may be the most difficult extraction of my career.”

I was not too numbed and gassed to know that the surgeon was in his sixties, and has had a long career.  What was happening inside my mouth?  Where was Sheryl Crow when I needed her?

Finally the dentist won the fight with tooth #18.  The drill stopped.  The dentist explained that most people have two roots on tooth #18, but I had surprised him by having three roots.

Then the dentist told me that he liked my music.

That was it!  There was no problem with my iPod.  Instead, I was too gassed up to figure out that the headphones had slipped off my ears during the procedure.  That’s why I could barely hear the music. 

But the surgeon could hear the music.  Sheryl Crow took his mind away.

. - . - . - . - .

Here is Sheryl (and her audience) singing The First Cut is the Deepest, recorded in St. Louis on a cellphone (4 minutes):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2wDcYTVNfQ

   I would have given you all of my heart 
   But there's someone who's torn it apart 
   And he's taking just all that I had
   But if you wanna try to love again
   Baby, I'll try to love again, but I know

   The first cut is the deepest

- . - .- . - . - . 

NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com