For the Other

Please stop telling me how to feel.

Stop telling me to calm down. Stop telling me to get over it. Don’t tell me to relax or to stop being offended.

If you know me, and you care about me, I would be grateful if you would give me a minute; if you would really pay attention.

I am grieving the outcome of this election. I am disheartened, discouraged, and disappointed. I have just recently attained a small degree of emotional health and stability after a crushing personal loss—and this feels like a set-back to me.

You may not understand this. You probably don’t understand it. That’s OK. You don’t have to understand it in order to be empathetic. All you have to do is believe me that this is really how I feel.

I am trying my best to not say unkind things about people who supported Trump. I think I’ve succeeded for the most part—but if I’ve said or written something that feels like a personal attack or insult, please bring it to my attention. I do not want to hurt or offend you. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, and I would like you to do the same for me.

You say how upset you are by the negativity—as though “negativity” on its own is a bad thing. “Negativity” is the only appropriate response to racism, ethnocentrism, sexism, and violence. No matter who we voted for, we should ALL be negative when we read a story about a young Saudi college student in Wisconsin beaten to death, or middle-school students in Michigan chanting “build the wall” at Latino classmates.

This is why I grieve. This is why I am discouraged, and even afraid for my friends who are Latino, black, gay, Jewish, or Muslim.

White Trump supporters do not, as a group, I presume, feel threatened and afraid when they leave their homes. They don’t wonder if they will be insulted or demeaned or threatened just because of who they are or what they look like.

But the groups that are targeted by Trump and some of his supporters do feel these kinds of threats and fear. The president-elect of the United States has said rude, scary, demeaning, threatening things about them—and some of his supporters take this as license to bring their formerly hidden racism, ethocentrism, misogyny out into the light.

Trump’s America is frightening for some people—entire groups of people. If you could acknowledge this without minimizing it, or contradicting it, or blaming it on the media, it would go a long way to helping those of us who are grieving and/or afraid to believe that this is not the America that you want to see.

Please don’t minimize it by saying it goes both ways.

I know of a few incidents that went the other way—Trump protesters that went too far, a white man who was beaten possibly because he voted for Trump. But these, I believe, are rare events in a backdrop of rising intolerance for the Other.

Pointing out that some Trump supporters have been insulted and even harmed by Trump-opposers does not mitigate the fact that Trump’s presidency, aligned with the KKK and other hate groups, represents an increase in fear and actual danger to at-risk groups. This comparison is another false equivalence in a sea of false equivalencies. It doesn’t even come close to being the same because Trump supporters are the ones who have the power and influence of the President on their side.

I’m not in any way saying that all Trump supporters are racist or sexist or any other “-ist.” I’m not saying you are. I’m saying it’s out there, and it appears to be getting worse.

I started out by telling you about my own grief and discouragement—but none of this is really about me and my feelings. I acknowledge my own white, cis-gender privilege. My sorrow is not for me.

I grieve for the Other. For the immigrant. For the mother of young black men. For a Muslim woman afraid to wear a scarf. For a brown-skinned store owner, for a young woman getting her first job, for a queer student in a classroom.

I am grieving for America.

PTSD

One day, more than seven months after that shocking, horrifying day, I stood on the spot where Aidan died and felt my breath being sucked out of my lungs. I put my hand on the wall and exhaled a long groan. That spot, that place--I walk past it, over it, 20 times a day. But in that moment, I looked down at the floor and saw him lying there, a pool of blood by his head; my brain somehow re-created the sound of M. Peevie crying and praying in the office a few short steps away.

Sometimes these punch-in-the-gut flashbacks come from nowhere, or from the slightest circumstance or reminder. Driving past the hospital where the paramedics rushed him. Seeing a fictitious murder victim on a TV crime show. Hearing the sound of multiple emergency vehicle sirens wailing past my normally quiet block.

These are the intrusive memories that accompany post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)--stark, harrowing images that pass through my mind like a Hiroshima slide presentation. I talked to my own personal best-friend-slash-therapist, Dr. Paradigm Shift,  about this. I told her how the projector behind my eyes starts running with the unwanted video, my breathing gets shallow and my skin feels clammy; sometimes my reaction is so physical that I double over and grab my gut as if it's happening right in front of me, again, right then and there.

Aidan and his buddy at the Cubs game.

It's a symptom of PTSD, she said, and the literature confirms this. "Intrusive re-experiencing is a core symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It can take various forms, including intrusive images, flashbacks, nightmares, and distress and physiological reactions when confronted with reminders," according to one scholarly article.  

Besides all the crying and sighing and generally missing my boy, these episodes added insult to injury, making me relive the horror, fear, and agony of that day. I wanted it to stop. Dr. PS suggested, and my own therapist agreed, that the best course of action would be to consciously and intentionally replace those grim, intrusive visuals with thoughts and mind pictures of happier times. 

"Come up with one or two images in your mind of Aidan that make you smile, that make you feel happy and peaceful," she suggested. "Have them ready to recall. When the intrusive images come, force your mind to replace them with the good images." It sounds like it won't work, I said. These powerful, supraliminal movies force themselves in front of the eyes of my brain; I didn't think something so simple as thinking happy thoughts would really be effective.

"It takes practice," Dr. PS said. "It's not going to make them stop; it's not going to make them go away right away. But if every time an image comes, and you don't want to stick there, take out the mental photo album, and start looking through it. Focus on the good pictures of Aidan." 

Now, nearly a year later, the PTSD flashbacks come far less frequently, and when they do, I am usually able to quickly change the channel in my mind. I go to Aidan on the beach, Aidan playing Pokemon cards with his friends, Aidan kneeling next to his bed, writing in his journal. I go to Aidan alive, here with me, where he should be.

And then I'm just sad. I can change the channel from PTSD, but every other channel is the grief channel. 

“When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes—when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever—there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.” ― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

Father's Day Scare

A little friend of ours watched her daddy have a seizure right in front of her tonight. It was one of the most frightening things I've ever been close to, and except for calling 911 and trying fecklessly to bring him out of it by talking to him (obviously, I'm medically clueless), I was scared and helpless.

Mr. Peevie and I had taken our kids plus a couple of extras to the park to play baseball. We were taking turns pitching and batting, and generally having a good time. Little Un-named Friend (LUF)'s mom dropped off LUF and her daddy to play with us, and they were sitting on the bench along the sidelines.

Suddenly LUF-daddy started yelling and convulsing, his arms straight out in front of him. For the first 10 seconds or so, Mr. Peevie and I thought he was kidding around, but then 9-year-old LUF started screaming, and we knew something was wrong. I ran over, to do what, I have no idea; and I called to Mr. Peevie to grab my phone from the backpack and call 911. I started talking to LUF-Daddy, but of course, he could not hear me; he stopped yelling, but his arms were still extended stiffly in front of him, his eyes were rolling back and showing red around the edges, and bits of foam whitened the corners of his mouth. LUF kept screaming, and I just kept watching him helplessly, knowing only to watch to make sure he wasn't choking on vomit.

Mr. Peevie couldn't figure out how to dial 911 on my phone, so he handed it to me and went to put his arms around poor, terrified, screaming LUF. It took me three tries before I could get my fingers to hit the right keys, but finally, I got through.

"A man is having a seizure," I yelled into the phone. "We're at Hitch school; we need help." They asked for the address, which I gave them with Mr. Peevie's level-headed help; I couldn't remember the names of the streets with LUF-Daddy foaming and seizing next to me on the bench and his horrified daughter screaming 10 feet away. Meanwhile, the other kids were watching from where they stood on the field; except M. Peevie had moved to a safer distance and stood with her fingers in her ears and a scared look on her face.

After about a minute, LUF-Daddy slumped back against the cast-iron bench and his head lolled to the side. His eyes were open, but not rolling back; he was only semi-conscious. I was still talking to the 911 operator, who was asking me for symptoms and telling me to lay him on his side.

"I can't really lay him on his side," I said nervously. "He's sitting up on a bench, kind of leaning over on his side already. He's a big guy." She asked me to try to make sure he didn't choke on anything, and to flag down the ambulance, which was on the way.

Mr. Peevie still held tight to LUF, who was crying and screaming, "Daddy! Daddy! He doesn't know me! Daddy!"

I got back on the phone and called LUF's mom to tell her what was going on. "I'll be right there," she said grimly, and she hung up quickly.

As LUF-Daddy started gradually regaining consciousness (if that's the right word for it), he started looking around with a dazed and confused expression on his face. I was sitting next to him on the bench with my hand on his arm. When his gaze focused on me, his eyes widened in fear and confusion, and he started backward, like he was afraid of me. He clearly had no idea who I was or what was going on. I got up and moved away from him, partly out of fear for my own safety, and partly to help him feel safer.

LUF was still crying and screaming, and LUF-Daddy looked over at her uncomprehendingly. Then he looked back at me, and startled again. I took another step away, but kept talking to him in what I hoped was a reassuring voice.

"You had a seizure, LUF-Daddy," I told him. "It's going to be OK. The ambulance is on the way." I kept repeating this mantra, because it was all I could do; but he was still clearly disoriented, and my words probably sounded like what a pet hears when its owner talks to it in human language.

It felt like a year passed, with the screaming and crying, the talking gently but warily watching, the waiting, the holding. Every time LUF-Daddy looked toward me, he jumped in his seat, like he was afraid I was going to hurt him; and every time, I moved further away because I felt it was entirely possible that he could lash out in fear. A man came from across the street, hearing the commotion. He wanted to be helpful, and tried to talk gently to LUF-Daddy, but with the same lack of success that I had had.

"I wouldn't go too near him," I warned him. "He's disoriented and scared. He's still coming out of it."

Finally we heard the sirens, and the fire truck and ambulance arrived (it was probably less than five minutes), and LUF-Mommy pulled up at the same time. She leapt out of her car and ran over to him, ignoring my warning that he was confused and maybe she should move slowly; but thankfully, he seemed to recognize her. She talked to him gently, but he still didn't talk or move from the bench.

The EMTs moved more slowly and carefully, assessing the situation like professionals before walking slowly over to LUF-Daddy. One paramedic asked me for the details of what had happened, and I told her while they helped him up and loaded him onto the stretcher. LUF was still sobbing loudly with Mr. Peevie's arms wrapped around her.

As they pushed him toward the ambulance, LUF-Mommy's face crumpled, and I put my arms around her. LUF came running over to us, and jumped up into her mom's arms, wrapping her legs around her waist and sobbing even louder. We huddled together, with LUF's mom saying reassuring things to comfort her.

"His arms stuck straight out!" she wailed, "And his eyes were red, and there were bubbles on his mouth! He didn't know who I was!"

"I know, baby, I know," her mom said, holding her tight and crying. "It's gonna be OK now. The doctors are going to help daddy."

Two or three times before they left, the paramedics asked about LUF, making sure that one of the adults was taking responsibility for her. Later, when I was processing the whole event, I thought to myself how alert that was, for them to not only take care of their patient, but also to be aware of the needs of a distraught little girl.

After LUF-Daddy had been taken to the ambulance, M. Peevie came over and put her arms around her little friend and held her tight. LUF-Mommy and I sat down on the bench to give her a chance to talk and cry a bit. C. Peevie helpfully grabbed A. Peevie and his little friend and walked them home, while M. Peevie sensitively suggested to LUF that they walk a little ways away from us so that they did not have to hear what we were saying. When she felt ready, LUF-Mommy drove her car home, and Mr. Peevie and I walked home with the two little girls.

All of us spent time tonight processing that scary event. M. Peevie's process included extra cuddling at bedtime, plus a reading of Psalm 23. The rest of us just talked through what we saw and how we felt; and one of us blogged about it.

I'm sure poor LUF will be processing this for years. How does a child recover from seeing such a frightening thing happen to her own daddy right in front of her eyes?

I did some research on grand mal seizures, which is my diagnosis of LUF-Daddy's situation, and I learned that we did a few things right by mainly leaving him alone. Don't hold him down, don't put anything in his mouth, turn him on his side (which we didn't have to do for him because he essentially did it for himself), and note the symptoms and length of the seizure.

I learned that it is technically not necessary to call 911 for a person having a seizure unless there is no medical ID indicating that the person has a seizure disorder. In this case, we called instinctively, and only learned later that he had never seized before, which is a positive indicator for medical attention.

Next time, I'll look for a medical ID bracelet--although how you do that when a big guy is flailing and foaming at the mouth, I really don't know.

Next time, maybe I'll just plan to be somewhere else.

Eleven, Part Deux

Darling A. Peevie,

So where was I? Oh, yeah: Standing next to your hospital bed, crying.

At 2 a.m. we sat down in a conference room with the chief of pediatric cardiology at Lutheran General Hospital, Dr. Ira DuBrow. We got a short but thorough course on complex cyanotic congenital heart defects (CHDs). I can't even remember your initial diagnosis--it's changed a half dozen times since then as the specialists got more information--but the first issue was a coarctation, or narrowing, of your aorta. It would need surgical repair as soon as you were stable.

I had tons of questions for Dr. DuBrow. I wanted to know why a level II ultrasound at 20+ weeks wouldn't have picked up on these issues. They only check for four heart chambers, he told us. They wouldn't have seen A. Peevie's issues unless they were trained and instructed to look for them.

And of course I needed to understand why this had happened to you. Was it something that I had done while pregnant? Was there an unknown genetic cause? Nope and nope. Turns out most of the time doctors don't know why embryonic hearts develop structural defects--even though heart defects are the most common birth defect, affecting nearly ten percent of all newborns.

Your severe congestive heart failure triggered a systemic shut-down affecting most of your other major organs. You were in such bad shape, Dr. DuBrow told us much later, that they did not think they could save your life. The beeps and alarms kept the intensive care team busy while you struggled to stay alive, and Daddy and I watched helplessly.

I told God in no uncertain terms that I was very angry at him for allowing this to happen to you, and that I could not lose another child. Caitlin was very much on our minds as we held your tiny fingers and watched your fluctuating oxygen saturation rate on the monitor.

We called both sets of grandparents the next day. "We" meaning "me." Daddy's emotions choked his words in his throat, and he could not speak. Grandmom and Grandpop M. cried and got on their knees to pray for you. Grandmom and Granddad B. drove all the way to Chicago from Florida to stand with us in your hospital room.

Finally, after four days, they stabilized you enough for the first surgery to repair the coarctation of the aorta. As they wheeled you out of the room and down the hall, surrounded by a dozen doctors and nurses, the four of us cried and held each other.

We met with the pediatric cardiology team, including the surgeon, to find out exactly what they'd be doing, and why. From that point forward, every time you faced another surgery or a new procedure, I asked three questions: What was the worst possible outcome? What was the best possible outcome? What was the expected outcome?

In an earlier report, Dr. DuBrow had written, "Because of the complexity of the abnormalities, the prognosis is guarded; however, I have reason to be cautiously optimistic that the baby can be brought through with reasonably good result."

Now, eleven years, three heart surgeries and dozens of procedures later, I watch you run, play, draw, read, imagine, climb, ride and generally experience a happy, healthy childhood--and I am grateful beyond words that you have been brought through with way better than reasonably good results.

Happy birthday, A. Peevie. I love you with a passion unfettered by reason.

Mom

Surreal Babysitting Adventures, Part III

Start with Surreal Babysitting Adventures, Part I and Part II, if you want the context.

One day, I was upstairs in my home office, working away. The Babysitter Who Shall Not Be Named (BWSNBN) was downstairs with the kids, doing a pretty good job of keeping them away from me and keeping the noise level down to a dull roar. That's all I ask, really. I'm no hard-ass.

BWSNBN--let's call her BW for typing and reading ease--comes upstairs with an urgent question. "Um, E. Peevie, do you have any air freshener?"

Well, as a matter of fact, I did not have air freshener. But I suspected that there had been a Number Two situation that was filling the downstairs atmosphere with noxious fumes.

"Light a match, BW," I suggested. "That always takes care of the problem for me."

Baaaaaaaaaaaaad idea.

About 20 minutes later I came downstairs, and I smelled a bit of a smoky smell. "BW," I asked, "Are you cooking something?"

"Nope," she replied.

"Did you burn something earlier? I smell smoke," I insisted. I headed toward the kitchen, but she still denied cooking anything. Approaching the kitchen, I could still smell smoke--but from a different direction. I turned and looked down the hallway, and saw ribbons of smoke curling out of the bathroom.

I ran down the hall and stopped at the bathroom door. "HOLY SHIT!" I hollered, even though three children and one impressionable babysitter were within earshot. "Shit! Fire!" A bonfire was burning on top of the toilet tank, with flames blistering the paint three feet up the wall and immolating the wicker basket of hairbrushes and TP.

My shocking language and the promise of dramatic and fiery excitement immediately brought all the kids running toward the bathroom--except for the smart one, A. Peevie, who went screaming for the front door, in the opposite direction. That boy might struggle with his math facts, but math facts won't drag you out of a burning house.

Meanwhile, I ran for the kitchen and filled up a pitcher with water. (It never even occurred to me to grab the fire extinguisher in easy reach on the counter.) I ran back to the bathroom and shooed M. Peevie and the sitter away from the door. C. Peevie had boldly turned on the tap and was futilely splashing water from the sink onto the flames, but I shooed him away as well.

When I dumped the entire pitcher of water on the conflagration, black smoke billowed up to the ceiling and the basket blaze slightly abated. Flames still crawled up the blackening wall from the charred hand towel, so I filled the pitcher in the tub and splashed the fire again. I grabbed the end of the still-burning towel and a tiny corner of the still-burning basket, tossed them into the sink and extinguished the rest of the stubborn flames.

Once I was confident that the danger from the fire was over, I remembered that A. Peevie was probably curled up in a fetal position on the front lawn, so I went to find him. I passed the BWSNBN, sobbing in the living room, and headed out the front door. I found A. Peevie waiting for me safely on the sidewalk, trembling like an addict two days into rehab. He didn't stop shaking for two hours, poor baby.

Inside, I put my arms around the sitter, who was also shaking and still sobbing. "It's OK, BW," I said, "Everything's OK now."

"I set your HOUSE on FIRE!" she sobbed. "On FIRE!"

"I know, sweetheart," I said. It's amazing how easily I could forgive setting my house on fire, but to this day cannot let go of too-crisp brownies and wet dishes in the cabinet. There is something wrong with me. "But it's OK now. The fire's out and everybody's safe. No harm done."

"I'm so sorry," BW said shakily, "I'm so sorry. I will never light another candle ever again in my life."

Aahhh. That's what happened. She lit a candle and set it on the back of the john, and the flame caught the hand towel.

"It's OK, BW," I repeated. "I've almost burned my own house down with candles many a time." I pointed to the block glass window alcove, with two circular singe-marks from un-watched candles. "See! We had only been in the house about two weeks when I almost burned it down!"

Eventually, everyone settled down and stopped shaking and blubbering. We cleaned up the mess in the bathroom, threw out the burned towel and the singed basket of melted stuff, and everything went back to "normal." Which, as we all know, is relative.

"I don't want you to pay me for today!" BW hilariously insisted; and I told her we were going to forget the whole thing, and didn't need to tell anyone about it. She told her parents anyway, and they offered to paint my bathroom.

But I declined. The wall doesn't look that bad, and if you tilt your head and squint a little, the partially-wiped-off-black-gunk kind of takes the shape of a menacing face--a little artistic reminder to all of us to be careful with candles.

And to be grateful for every single day without a house fire.

Counter-Intuitive

A. Peevie has more anxiety than Woody Allen. From the time he was very young, he has experienced the usual childhood fears (and some not-so-usual) only in disproportionate levels. Separation, storms, dark places, animals, death, germs--these things would cause him to erupt in a screaming, inconsolable fit of terror.

One time, at the Wisconsin State Fair, we were walking happily along the Midway when A. Peevie sighted a teeny tiny storm cloud on the horizon. The sky was otherwise as clear as the skin on a Clearasil spokesteen. AP started whining for us to leave.

As the teeny tiny cloud got a little bit bigger, and a little bit closer, the whining turned to crying. "We have to leave NOW!" A. Peevie sobbed. "It's going to rain! There's going to be lightning and thunder! WE! MUST! LEAVE! NOW!"

We kept trying to reassure him. We'll go inside if it rains, we told him. We'll keep you safe. We won't let you be outside if there's any lightning. It was no use. Gradually the cloud got bigger, and the sky started to get a bit darker as the storm moved into the county. The crying turned to panicked screaming: "A storm is coming! We're going to be struck by lightning! We're all going to DIIIIIIIEEEEEEE!"

This was all before one drop of rain fell. A. Peevie kept sobbing and screaming until we finally headed into the chicken barn. It did eventually rain, and there was brief thunder and lightning. Afterward, we tried to talk rationally to A. Peevie about his fears, but he came back with a rational retort: "Lightning can KILL you," he said. And that was that.

So anyway, my point is, the boy has fear and anxiety issues. But guess what his favorite movie is.

Hint #1: It's not Sound of Music.

Hint #2: It's not animated.

Hint #3: It was made by one of my favorite movie makers, who has a new movie that just came out in June that I totally want to see, even though it only rates a 19 percent on the TomatoMeter.

That's right. A. Peevie's favorite movie, that he watches over and over again, is Signs, by M. Night Shyamalan. He loves to pause it on the brief frames where you can see a leg, a hand, or the whole body of an alien. He replays the alien scenes, and some of the other scenes too, like the one where the awesome Joaquin Phoenix leaps back six feet after seeing a video clip of an alien on TV.

He has also watched all the extras on the DVD, which makes me think that someday maybe he'll be a filmmaker. "I'll make scary movies," he told me.

Go figure.

How is this the favorite movie of a kid who can't stay in his own bed at night because of nightmares and awakemares? Sometimes he comes into my room and tells me that his imagination is scaring him, and he can't help it. "My imagination is thinking of scary things," he says.

I know what you're thinking: then stop letting him watch scary things on TV, you dummy! But we do restrict his access to scary things. This movie came on cable one night when we were on vacation (because, as you know, we STILL don't have cable at home, do we, MR. PEEVIE?), and he accidentally started watching it. The other kids, including his older brother, ran screaming from the room as soon as the scary music started, but A. Peevie talked us into letting him watch it. He was intrigued by the aliens.

And by way of brief review, I love this movie as well. I can watch it over and over again, just like A. Peevie does, because the characters capture me, and the signs, when I recognize them, make me catch my breath every time.

I love Roger Ebert's review of this movie (of course); especially this paragraph that explains exactly why I will go see Shyamalan's new movie, even though it's getting the worst TomatoMeter rating of all his movies:

In a time when Hollywood mistakes volume for action, Shyamalan makes quiet films. In a time when incessant action is a style, he persuades us to play close attention to the smallest nuances. In "The Sixth Sense" (1999) he made a ghost story that until the very end seemed only to be a personal drama--although there was something there, some buried hint, that made us feel all was not as it seemed. In "Unbreakable" (2000) he created a psychological duel between two men, and it was convincing even though we later discovered its surprising underlying nature, and all was redefined.

It's kind of cool to me that my quietly brilliant 10-year-old appreciates the nuanced story-telling of Signs. It's counter-intuitive, but cool.

I Love Going to the Dentist

What? you say, startled, disbelieving. You love going to the dentist?

Yes. I really do.

I not only have a low tolerance for pain, but I also have a microbe-sized tolerance for the fear of pain. And I don't like being lectured at, which used to happen every damn time I approached a DDS.

I'll admit it: I'm not the most dentally fastidious person you'll ever meet. (OK, fine. Fastidious is not an accurate descriptor for any part of my life. Moving on.) I brush once a day, and occasionally, twice. I hardly ever floss. Every time I went to the dentist, I'd get a lecture about how I needed to brush three times a day and floss at least once a day, and I'd hang my head in shame and confess my failure and promise (i.e., lie) that I'd do better.

Then the hygienist would start in with the scraping and the buzzing and the swearing about the placque build-up, like she's personally offended or something. I hate the scraping; it's not comfortable. In fact, it's dang uncomfortable. My hands would grip the armrests with white-knuckle anxiety, and I'd moan at the slightest hint that there would be a tiny bit of discomfort at some point in the near future.

I'm sure they loved me.

And the x-rays--they make me literally hoo-rawrk. Somebody gets near my back teeth with a hunk of white plastic, and my hyper-sensitive gag reflex kicks in full-swing. Getting a full set of x-rays was majorly traumatic for everyone involved.

And all this drama was even before the dentist pulls out any actual dental tools of torture! If x-rays and cleanings give me fits of blubbering dread, then you can imagine what happens when the DDS actually tries to stick a needle in my tender gums, or approaches me with that horrific instrument of television torture, the d-r-i-l-l! (Hey. I watched Alias. It did not help with my dentist anxiety.)

So I hated the going to the dentist because not only would I gag at the x-rays and death-grip during the cleaning, but any level of discomfort or pain would send me screaming into the waiting room. It was not good for business, or for my personal sanity.

And then I found a dentist with a magic no-more-fear-and-anxiety machine, and the willingness to use it. It's called nitrous oxide, and it has transformed my dental life.

One time the assistant had just finished up my x-rays and cleaned up the hurl, and she said, mistakenly, "OK, the hard part's over."

"Not for me," I said. "I hate cleanings. I fear them. My hands are numb from gripping the armrests after a cleaning. Hate, hate, hate."

"Really?" she said. And then she uttered the magic words that transformed my dental experiences forevermore. "Have you ever considered trying nitrous?"

I had no idea that you could get nitrous oxide just for cleanings. But for the biggest babies among us--and I proudly include myself in that sensitive crowd--nitrous is the savior of my dental health.

So now, I make my dentist appointments, and I even keep them. I even secretly look forward to them. I love nitrous so much that it's really, really good that it's a controlled substance. I'd like to have a cannister in my home, but then my children would be eating mustard for dinner and wearing shorts to school in the winter, and not only on gym days.

I love nitrous so much that I don't even mind that that the mask they use to administer it leaves my face looking like it has a nasty skin condition for several hours, until the collagen kicks in and the indentations smooth out.

I don't mind the scraping, or the buzzing, or the drilling. If I feel a little discomfort, I say, "Glurg," and they immediately adjust the nitrous, or the novocaine, or the crack, or whatever it is that they're injecting into my face, and I'm totally cool with it. There's no fear, no anxiety, no white-knuckle indentations on the armrests. It's all, like, excellent, man.

In case you live on the north side of Chicago, and you want to hook up with my dentist, her name is Dr. Tundi (rhymes with Cindy) Frank. She's located at 4200 West Peterson Avenue, and her phone number is (773) 481-1940.

Just as an aside--because apparently Dr. Frank does not have her own web site--this link will take you a hilarious page from a weird site called ilinius.com, which sounds like it was written in English, translated into Korean, then from Korean into Arabic, from Arabic into Chinese, and then back into English. It says, "Badly with the tooth?"

Yes, definitely call Dr. Frank if you're badly with the tooth. She'll take care of you. And if you have more than a tiny bit of anxiety, like I do, ask her to hook you up with the N.O. I am telling you, it's like having three glasses of Malbec in a row, with no teeth staining. You can even drive yourself home afterward.