Testimony

I had a dream that I got to church and suddenly found out that I was supposed to get up front and give a testimony. I was not prepared, and I wondered, "What would my testimony even be?" 

A testimony is supposed to tell the story of God's work in your life. If you google "Christian testimony" you will get almost 17 million hits. You'll encounter a page called Christian Testimonies on the official King James Bible online website, or "Amazing Stories, Christian Testimonies, Healing Miracles, and Inspirational Stories" on the 700 Club website. (I'm not linking to that one. Sorry.) 

All of them, if the sample I read is representative, tell stories of healing and forgiveness and change. They all come from the perspective of having been through the fire, and come out on the other side in a place of transcendental hope and joy.

"...the Lord took my dad dying, took my worst nightmare and showed me how he can make it into the best thing that's happened to me."

"All the chains that held me captive for so long have been shattered!"

"J. surrendered to God and hasn't touched drugs or alcohol since."

"All I have to do is live and love in the grace God has given me, and I just stand there and let him do what he loves best--and that is make my life perfect."

After I woke up, I kept thinking about this testimony business. I am in such a broken, desperate spiritual place--I definitely don't have a 700 Club-type testimony. I mostly can't worship; I can only grieve. I can barely praise; sometimes it's hard to be thankful. I can only grieve. 

I can't sing the words to hymns that proclaim 

"I fear no foe with thee at hand to bless; Ills have no weight, tears lose their bitterness.Where is thy sting, death? Where grave thy victory?"

...because I do most definitely feel the "sting" of Aidan's death, and the grave has an excruciating, if temporary, victory. 

I especially can't confess, because my only sorrow is the constant presence of Aidan's absence. I can, however, sing the parts that ask God's help: "In life, in death, Lord, abide with me." This is the only part of worship that I can do these days, most of the time. 

But maybe we need more testimonies that don't have a happy, feel-good conclusion, in which the believer testifies from the other side of suffering. We need testimonies that come from right in the middle of pain and suffering and inadequacy and sin and despair--because that's where we live. 

Even if you're on the other side of your own worst troubles, you are still in this world, and the people around you are suffering; so you must, if you walk with Jesus, feel their sorrow and pain. That should be the place where every testimony begins and ends--rather than beginning with sin and sorrow and ending with the theme song from The Lego Movie.

The wife of a person I know suffered from a dangerous, life-threatening health condition; he was by her side for more than a week, watching the doctors try to diagnose and treat her, watching her sometimes seem like she was getting better, sometimes seem like she was dying.

I emailed him, "You must be exhausted and scared. Hope you get a restful sleep."

He replied: "I'm NOT scared. Why would I be scared? God is in control of space, time, and place. He is in charge; and I and my bride have placed our trust and lives in Him. Because He Lives, I can face tomorrow."

All I can see when I read that are huge flashing red letters: D E N I A L.

It doesn't ring true. If he had said that he did feel fear, but he prayed, and now feels comfort and peace--that would be more believable. But to not even admit the presence, ever, of fear? I'm not buying it. It's definitely not the kind of testimony that buttresses my own feeble faith because it is so far from my own experience.

We need to hear stories from people who are STILL struggling with sin, who are STILL afraid, who are STILL sad, even though they are believers. Trusting in Jesus does not mean we no longer feel normal human emotions like fear and sadness. It doesn't mean we no longer experience the hold of sin on our lives. Rather,the beauty of Jesus is that we are invited to bring these normal human experiences and feelings and struggles to Him, and He will meet us right where we are.

That's my testimony. I mostly can't worship or confess because I don't have it in me. I guess that's Gospel 101. I don't have it in me. But if I do have moments when I can worship, moments of faith or joy or thankfulness, it is very clear to me that those moments come directly from the hand of God. God supplies grace to allow me to cling tenuously to faith and hope; and God provides comfort from other sufferers, other doubters, others who don't have all the answers.

Letting Go and Holding on Tight

One thing defines 2013 for me: the loss of Aidan. He died in 2012, but we spent 2013 trying to learn how to live our Aidan-less lives.

I still have days, like Sunday a week ago, when I cry so hard and for so long that I'm exhausted and ready to go back to bed by 2 p.m. But then days go by when I only cry a little bit, like today. I shed a few tears when I write about him; or when I see something Aidan-esque, such as a manatee, a toy train, or a Pokemon; or when I walk past the table that holds photos, cards, and mementos. Mr. Peevie has moments, hours, and days like this, too.

Seattle

I think this is what getting through grief looks like. Midway through the year I said to the therapist, I don't know how to do this, how to walk through this dark valley. He said, "You're doing it." I suppose what he meant was that I was getting out of bed, working, taking care of my family--sometimes badly, and always with the constant presence of Aidan's absence, but I was doing it.

We took a family vacation to Seattle in late June. We had a fabulous trip--as as perfect as it could be without Aidan. Everything is measured by that yardstick, now; everything is viewed through the lens of not having Aidan. Our photographs have two kids in them, instead of three. We asked for a table for four at dinner; we purchased four bus tickets; four people divide easily between two beds. 

Two kids rolling down a hill instead of three.

In August we attended the wedding of friends whom Aidan loved, and who loved Aidan. I started to cry from the moment the groom looked down the aisle at his bride as her father walked her to the front of the church. I cried for Aidan and for our lost future; I cried because Aidan did not get to see his friends' beautiful ceremony, because he won't have his own, or stand next to C. Peevie and M. Peevie at theirs.

I had lunch with a friend later that month, and our conversation covered many topics--but later she said she felt that every conversation should be about Aidan and about our loss, about our missing him. This notion felt exactly right to me. For a long time nothing else mattered except that Aidan was gone.

I think this is at the Space Needle.

His loss was a bleeding, internal wound that would never heal. It was chronic and debilitating. 

There are still times that nothing else matters except that Aidan is not here. Bereavement obstructs my work, my relationships, even my faith. In church, there are still times when I cannot worship, pray, confess, commune, or greet because all I can be and feel is that I have lost Aidan-- which feels incompatible with worship, and especially with confession. I can look at Jesus, but only as a sufferer, not as a sinner. It's like I exist on two different planes, or in two different dimensions; or I'm schizophrenic. If one personality has surfaced, the other recedes. 

But one year, one month and twenty-one days later, I can see that my grieving has changed from what it used to be, when it consumed most of my waking hours. It is still a constant presence, but it is no longer constantly debilitating. Bereavement has changed me--it has changed all of us--but this new, bereaved me is slowly re-learning how to do relationships, work, and worship all over again.

Part of me feels that this reduction in debilitation is a betrayal of Aidan, like I don't love him enough to keep on suffering the most intense and painful grief. But if I let myself go down that rabbit-hole of despair, I would spend the rest of my life not just grieving, but clinically depressed and possibly suicidal. So I remind myself that moving through grief and letting go of the empty despair of those first few weeks and months is the right thing to do for myself, my family, and for Aidan's memory.

Aidan and Mr. Peevie in Colorado, 2011.

Continuing to let go of debilitating grief, but holding on tight to Aidan, to my memories of him, to the things he loved and valued, and to the lessons he taught me--this is where I hope 2014 will take me. 

But god, I miss that kid.

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

Please, Make Me Cry

My dear friend Roseanne came over to watch movies and drink margaritas. She told me that she and her daughter had been to the cemetery, to visit Aidan's grave. The grave is marked with a flat granite headstone with a slightly curved top and a simple inscription: "Aidan Kenneth Bradshaw, 1997 - 2012."

Roseanne continued her story: "Darlene sat down on the ground next to the headstone and we talked about Aidan and your family," she told me. "She brushed some leaves off the marker. Then when we left, she kissed her fingers, touched them to the stone and said, 'Goodbye, little buddy.'"

I felt tears beginning to burn and press behind my eyelids, and I couldn't stop them. I put my head in my hands and sobbed, grief stabbing through my chest, my lungs, my voice. Roseanne wrapped her arms around me and held me while I cried. We stood like that for a long time--me weeping, Roseanne holding onto me, holding me up, crying her own tears as well.

Eventually the tears slowed and stopped, and we resumed our conversation about pretend boyfriends and realbeverages; we poured and talked and laughed and remembered. Later in the evening she said, "I'm sorry I made you cry when I told you about going to the cemetery."

"Don't be," I said. "Crying is good." I don't necessarily understand this, but I know it's true. I know that when someone gives me the opportunity to cry for Aidan, I am always grateful. I know that it hurts, it's exhausting, it's ugly--but it's necessary.

William Shakespeare wrote, "To weep is to make less the depth of grief" (Henry the Sixth) and Victor Hugo said, "Those who do not weep, do not see" (Les Miserables).

As always, the opinions expressed in This Blog are backed up by research: In 1977, William H. Frey wrote the first definitive research book (discussed here) on the biochemistry of emotional tears. He proposed that emotional tears, which have a different chemical composition than irritant tears (caused, for example, by cutting onions), not only lubricate, clean and protect the eyes, but that they remove toxins from the body. They literally produce a physiological response that makes you feel better.

I loved that story about Darlene. I loved picturing her there, caring about Aidan, missing him, talking about him. 

What I know about crying is this: when we have lost someone dear to us, there are tears inside of us. We have three options: we can keep the tears inside, we can cry alone, or we can cry with a friend. Repressing the sadness--keeping the tears inside--is only going to lead to anger, depression, panic attacks, and possibly hair cancer.

When I cry for Aidan, it's not an elegant, Hollywood kind of crying, with a delicate tear wetting my long eyelashes and tracing my perfect cheekbone. No, it is not even a bit pretty. It's monsoon-like, with wracking sobs, swollen eyes, and frowny, joggly jowls. But I don't give a damn.

And if you are willing to be with me when I'm having one of these episodes, if you are willing to hold my hand or let me smear snot and mascara on your shirt, if you are not afraid of the ugly cry, you are giving me the only gift that means anything to me right now, in this season of grief.

Sometimes a friend will say, "If there's anything I can do for you, just let me know." There's very little you can do for me that will help me get through this excruciating grief--except this: say Aidan's name to me, ask me how I'm doing in this lonely valley and really want to hear the answer; tell me a story, thought, anecdote, or memory you have of Aidan; if you didn't know Aidan, tell me a thought about what you have learned about him since he died, or ask me a question about him. You can even ask me about his death. Any of these will most likely make me cry, and sometimes this crying is going to be ugly. 

It may make you uncomfortable; it may make you want to help me feel better or get over it. Resist this temptation. Rather, just be there with me. Touch my arm, hold my hand, cry your own tears--but don't try to say anything or do anything to make it stop. It will stop, eventually, and I'll look horrible and feel exhausted--but I'll also feel relief that that quota of tears has finally been released and will never need to be cried again. There are more to come--there will never be a time when I have cried all the tears I need to cry for Aidan; but you will have given me the gift of releasing a small portion of this grief, and I will be grateful.

Please: make me cry.

Learning How to Breathe

Like an accident victim re-learning how to walk after months in bed, I am slowly beginning to re-learn how to breathe. 

After Aidan died--it will be two months tomorrow--I felt like I had to remind myself to breathe. I had to push each breath out deliberately, or it would lie too long in my lungs. It helped if I pushed on my chest, right in the middle, at the top of my ribcage. After the exhale, I'd wait to inhale, expecting that if I waited long enough, when I started breathing again, things would be different. Aidan would still be here. Aidan would still be breathing. 

(I have to use his real name, and not his Peevie moniker, because being whimsical just doesn't feel right any more. My whimsy is gone, at least when I'm talking about Aidan.)

I have made progress in the breathing department, but I am still lost and confused and empty with regard to every other aspect of life. How do I go back to work? How do I read books about anything other than grief and loss? How do I tell jokes, and laugh, and find beauty in the world? 

Maybe it's too soon for any of these things.

How do I answer when someone asks me how I'm doing? It's a normal question. It's not wrong that people ask me; in fact, I understand that they say it to be encouraging, to express love and support.

How am I doing? Here are my answers: Nothing is as it should be. Shitty. Empty. Sad. Bereft. I finally started to cry, after four weeks of wondering where my tears were.Like a blanket of fog is hanging low over the architecture of my life, touching and obscuring everything, dampening or deadening all pleasure and enjoyment.

I'm reading (and re-reading) everything I can about grief and loss. So far I've read Lament for a Son, by Nicholas Wolterstorff; The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion; The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis; and I'm halfway through a collection of essays called Be Still My Soul, edited by Nancy Guthrie.

I still want to talk about Aidan all the time, remember him, have people remember him to me. I don't really want to talk about books or movies or politics or celebrity gossip or anything that doesn't directly connect to Aidan. I remember this feeling after Caitlin died. I remember that for a year after we lost her, our first child, born prematurely and living only two hours, the most important thing you could know about me was that we had a baby and she died.

And now this is The Thing that defines me: the lack of Aidan. There is no Aidan--at least, not on this earth.

I am clinging to Aidan's things in his room, to Manny, his stuffed manatee, to his poems, to photos of Aidan sitting on the beach writing in his journal, goofing around with his friends or siblings, smiling into the camera with his gentle, sweet grin.

And with feeble faith, I cling also to the hope of the resurrection, and to God's promise:

We believe that Jesus died and rose again; and so it will be for those who have died in Christ. God will raise them to be with the Lord forever. Comfort one another with these words. --I Thessalonians 4:14, 17-18

Barely Coping

This broken leg thing brings way more pain, trouble and inconvenience than you might imagine.

Poor C. Peevie. When he arrived home on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, he moved awkwardly and painfully. His temporary cast seemed bulky, but provided only a minimum of stability and protection. Even a slight bump of the pillow under his leg made him cry out.

The parents-on-call in Door County for that first night after The Break managed C. Peevie's pain medications assiduously and conservatively. HarMom checked on him frequently, timed his doses down to the millisecond, and doled out a single Vicodin every six hours. The narcotic would take the edge off for few hours, but the last two hours would bring increasing discomfort and pain.

"I think it's good for him to try to manage some of the pain without medication, don't you?" she asked. Actually, I don't. She was more concerned about the dangers of addiction than about pain. I'm the opposite, probably because I'm so pain averse myself that I request nitrous oxide at the dentist. For cleanings.

So when C. Peevie started showing signs of pain, and then more signs, and then overtly complaining, I made the executive decision to increase his dose and his frequency, to one-and-a-half VicoLalas every five hours. "Stay ahead of the pain" is my motto.

Even with the increased dose, though, we'd spend hours every day before and after each dose managing his pain and discomfort. The nights were the worst.

Instead of starting high school on September 8, C. Peevie went to the orthopedic surgeon. We were so glad he didn't need surgery, but Dr. Ortho said the swelling would not allow him to put on a permanent cast yet. He prescribed a wheelchair for safer mobility, and I spent the next two days making phone calls and researching medical equipment companies online. Once the wheelchair arrived, C. Peevie spent hours doing wheelies, crashing into furniture and walls, and getting in the way.

Pain levels fluctuated over the next week. By Thursday and Friday, C. Peevie was managing his pain with OTC helpers; but over the weekend, pain returned with a vengeance and he was back on the VicoDuh. Between the pain of the break, the mysterious pain in his heel and Achilles tendon, and his fidgety, can't-find-a-comfortable-position-on-the-couch vexation, the two of us were getting an intermittent total of four hours of sleep per night.

Still not able to go to school, during the day C. Peevie watched Frasier DVDs incessantly, played video games, and re-read Harry Potter for the zillionth time. Every time he needed to pee, I'd lift his leg off the mound of pillows supporting it and place it gently on the ground. I'd help him up from the couch and hover while he crutched himself to the bathroom.

"You don't need to help him so much," instructed my friend Dr. Vespa, a physical therapist. She taught him how to get up, sit down, and maneuver himself on crutches. "He can do it. His balance is better than yours or mine," she assured me. So I backed off a little, grateful for the reprieve, but still anxious that he'd topple over.

On Sunday at ridiculous o'clock a.m., I was waiting for him to finish in the bathroom, when I heard a slide-crash-thud. "Mom!" he called out with fear and desperation in his voice, but I was already there. He had somehow fallen while standing in front of the sink, and was half-kneeling, half-lying on the floor, with his broken leg stuck out in front and his good leg--if it was still good-- scrunched underneath him.

"Get me up!" he said urgently. "Get me up, Mom!" I lifted him up from under the arms and sat him down on the toilet seat.

"Sit!" I said. "Just stay there. I'll go get the wheelchair." I wheeled him back to the couch and laid him down. Scared and suffering, he shook and whimpered for half an hour afterward. So did I. He had no idea why he fell.

The whole process of coping with a kid with a broken tibia is exhausting and stressful. I was telling my therapist that I feel like I'm crashing: I complain all the time, and overnight I went from feeling like I was getting healthier and stronger and happier to feeling like I was just hanging on by a piece of used dental floss.

"This is a family crisis," he said simply. "You are dealing with a crisis."

This simple explanation brought enlightenment and ironically, relief. A crisis? I wondered. It never occurred to me that this was a crisis, because it does not involve life and death. But it makes sense; everything has been affected, inconvenienced, complicated. Hearing the word "crisis" caused a paradigm shift that allowed me to give myself a break. In a period of crisis, it's OK if all I can do is barely keep my head above water.

And that's what I'm doing: Ordering lots of carry-out. Doing just enough laundry to avoid having to turn my underwear inside out. Washing just enough dishes to avoid food poisoning. Taking just enough showers to avoid smelling like butt.

Most of the time.

Remembering Caitlin

Tonight after dinner, the kids and Mr. Peevie and I will eat chocolate cake in honor of what would be our daughter Caitlin's 14th birthday. We'll each say something about Caitlin, even though we never knew her.

One time six years ago, we were having this same little memorial event. C. Peevie said, "I miss you Caitlin, even though I never got to meet you."

And A. Peevie, who was four at the time, was not to be outdone. "I miss you, Caitlin," he said, and continued happily, "You poo-poo head."

I don't know if this tradition is weird, or nuts, or psychologically damaging--but it feels right for our family. I'm pretty sure that it arose out of our children's unquenchable desire for cake, rather than from their feeling of loss for their sister.

Remembering Caitlin didn't always involve cake. In the beginning, Mr. Peevie and I would just quietly mention our little girl's name to each other, and futilely wonder what our lives would be like with her in them. We wonder what color her eyes were, and if she'd be a gymnast, or a tennis nut, or a piano player.

We still cried, back then; occasionally, we still do. Not so much because the feeling of loss is still painful--but because we can clearly remember the pain of losing her. (I read somewhere that our brains do not have the capacity to "remember" pain. I call bogus.) I remember the strong urge I felt for months, when I would see people going about their normal lives, to shout at them, "I had a baby, and she died!"

Telling Caitlin stories brings tears to my eyes, but they're good tears, if you can understand that. Caitlin is a part of our family, just as much as if she had lived. Losing her is no longer the most important part of my identity (as it was for many months), but it will always be part of who I am. To not talk about her is to deny her, and to deny a part of me.

Shortly after Caitlin died, I read an essay about grief in the New York Times by Anna Quindlen. She was speculating about why grief "has the power to silence us." Here's a slice of her beautiful, powerful words:

Grief remains one of the few things that has the power to silence us. It is a whisper in the world and a clamor within. More than sex, more than faith, even more than its usher death, grief is unspoken, publicly ignored except for those moments at the funeral that are over too quickly, or the conversations among the cognoscenti, those of us who recognize in one another a kindred chasm deep in the center of who we are.
Maybe we do not speak of it because death will mark all of us, sooner or later. Or maybe it is unspoken because grief is only the first part of it. After a time it becomes something less sharp but larger, too, a more enduring thing called loss.
Perhaps that is why this is the least explored passage: because it has no end. The world loves closure, loves a thing that can, as they say, be gotten through. This is why it comes as a great surprise to find that loss is forever, that two decades after the event there are those occasions when something in you cries out at the continuous presence of an absence. "An awful leisure," Emily Dickinson once called what the living have after death.

"The presence of an absence"--if you've lost someone, you know what that means, what it feels like.
Yesterday I was wearing my "Caitlin necklace"--an April birthstone pendant on a slim gold chain. My friends gave it to me for my birthday, six weeks after she was born. It was a beautiful, touching, sensitive gesture, from gentle friends who understood that even though remembering might bring tears, it also brings healing.

M. Peevie noticed my necklace, and I asked her if she knew why I was wearing it.

"Because Caitlin died," she said matter-of-factly.

"Yes," I said, "That's part of it. But also because tomorrow is Caitlin's birthday."

"Oh, mom," M. Peevie said, "Let's have cake tomorrow night, and remember Caitlin together as a family!"

Great idea, little girl.

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.