I am a grown-up and this is just a needle

Soft food, common faints, and other minor catastrophes

I am a baby about anything that might involve pain but especially anything with the dentist. I watched “Little Shop of Horrors” way too many times to not be firmly in the camp of “dentists are sadists.” Years ago, I was told I’d need a gum graft for my lower front teeth at some point and finally my own active jaw caught up with me earlier this year.

“Do you use your mouth a lot?” the dentist asked.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Like would you say you talk more than most people?”

“Without a doubt.” As I’m saying this, I’m realizing the dentist’s office is really one of the very few places where I talk very little but no one else who has met me more than once would even need to ask.

Gum graft recovery supposedly involved 48 hours of no talking, and 3-6 weeks of modified diet with a focus on soft foods. Both of these are actual torture for me since so much of life revolves around food, cooking, and eating, with a strong textural preference for “crunchy” over “denture-safe.” The result was weeks of me complaining nonstop (mostly to Jeff but also anyone who asked how I was). I found myself negotiating with ChatGPT trying to sell it on why I could put crushed Gavottes on top of my ice cream provided I directed to the back of my mouth to chew only for ChatGPT to say “don’t let a wafer cookie be the thing that complicates a smooth recovery.”

That’s actually the thing with lightweight medical drama: you find yourself negotiating what’s possible because nothing’s going to kill you, it’s just going to be annoying, costly in terms of money, costly in terms of time, potentially costly in terms of dignity.

As someone who probably was made for the Victorian era in terms of health and fortitude, I faint easily. I’ve fainted getting a pedicure, during and after multiple meals, on an airplane, at a conference, out of surprise when I fell down the stairs, while just sitting waiting for a work call to start, and getting my blood drawn. When you have “the common faints” (the actual term an actual cardiologist who is not related to me used), there is no treatment or workaround. The official medical guidance from the same cardiologist was “if you think you’re going to faint, sit down.” Just an annoyance.

There are some tricks: I can use vagal syncope as justification for a heavy hand with salt. I can calm down before any blood draw by repeating out loud “I am a grown up and this is just a needle” (something I have done now for well over a decade and not fainted once since starting). Again, if any medical “condition” is managed by reciting a mantra or sitting down, I’m not in any kind of delusional state about the severity, but when life already has enough basic stressors, one more thing is just one thing too many.

Not to mention, knowing nothing is that serious yourself doesn’t change the impact on those around you. A former coworker/dear friend, Rachel, has now been with me TWICE when I’ve fainted at dinner and she’s the one holding ice on my neck and making sure I get home and explaining to people there’s no need to call an ambulance. Last week when I fainted at a restaurant, I’m doubled over and green while instructing Jeff “make sure they know I’m not drunk, just a loser.” As mostly non-serious as my common faints are, it’s still scary to pass out in a public place.

I know how this sounds. My mother managed stage IV cancer for nine years, so I’m not confused about where soft food and fainting at dinner rank against actual disease. But knowing the ranking doesn’t change what it feels like when you’re already stretched thin and one more thing lands on the pile. My mother, of all people, would have gotten that. She’d have called fainting at a restaurant mortifying and meant it, without it costing her anything to also be the one with the real diagnosis.

Ten days before Thanksgiving last year, I threw my back out putting a laundry basket on the ground — because that’s just what life is like in your 40s — and was immediately in a panic. Thanksgiving is my Super Bowl (see above re: food, cooking, and eating) and now I couldn’t really cook. I found myself super committed to rehabbing with just that one goal in mind: what did I need to do to make sure I’d be able to make my 16-separate-recipe / four-days-to-prepare meal? All the annoyance while lying on my back with my legs at a 90-degree angle had a single goal: I wasn’t rehabbing to reduce pain but rather to improve oven access.

Great news: I made it. Sixteen recipes, four days, a back that still complained about it but did the job anyway, and the ability to ask Jeff for help during peak oven traffic time. That’s the thing about inconveniences: they have edges. You can see the other side of them, which is its own kind of permission to be annoyed and dramatic on the way there. I’d like to think nobody at that table knew what it took to get the turkey out of the oven, except that since I talk so much that it’s led to gum recession, I was certainly not quiet on this topic.

While I’m sure I was supposed to learn a powerful lesson about gratitude for mobility and health when I have it, I mostly learned when/how to put a laundry basket down safely.

I’m still a baby about pain. I still talk myself through blood draws like a hostage negotiator working my own case. But I’ve stopped thinking of the narrating and the doing as two different things. The narrating might just be how I do it.