A Mind Is a Dangerous Thing

Last week I went to the dentist for a regular tooth cleaning (Tooth – I barely have one or two. The rest are caps, crowns, enamel things they put over posts, pins, I-beam structures, and root canal platings. My mouth is a record of the development of historical dental practices, most of which have now been abandoned.) A dental cleaning, for those of you who have good teeth or are in denial, is a practice like mini-waterboarding. It usually involves gagging on water washes, gum poking with sharp instruments, a whole lexicon of sighs and sudden breath catches by the hygienist, and gritty polishing using Chicago beach sand intended to taste like mint – the grinding administered by an impressive little drill that looks like a ball-point pen but feels like Ryobi four-horsepower metal drill with a 1/4″ dulled bit last used to erect the St. Louis Arch.

I found out they have a new instrument of torture called a Cavitron, which shoots larger amounts of water than what is used in waterboarding and somehow administers a painful electric nerve stimulation at the same time. Its purpose is ostensibly to remove coffee and tea stains from derelict drinkers like me, but it mostly is designed to convince victims that their dentists and hygienists REALLY want them to stop drinking coffee and tea. It convinced me for an entire day (yesterday) that I would never again drink coffee or tea. The Cavitron is a perfectly-named hand-held prod.

I’m writing this in Crescendo, which is a coffee house on Monroe Street in Madison. My friend, Earl Gray, is at the table with me. Take THAT – Cavitron. As you may guess, I don’t go back for another tooth cleaning for six months. I suspect that by then, the Cavitron will have morphed into a Mega-Stripmine-Tron.

Actually, I’m not going to write about the dentist; that was just a prelude. I’m going to write about my mind because of something else that happened at the dentist’s office, so forget about the Cavitron.

Before the actual waterboarding started, the hygienist put a little strappy thing around my wrist, which I thought she would then attach to the padded armrest before strapping down my other wrist. Instead she said, we’re helping to screen people. I’m just taking your blood pressure. In less than a minute, her breath caught, and she showed me the numbers, 150 over 95.

“Are you taking anything for high blood pressure?”

“No,” I said. “Until now, it’s been normal. I had a physical a year ago and when the nurse checked me, it was a little high, but after the prostate exam was over, it went back to normal. My doctor said that was not unusual.”

“Well, you should see him again. High blood pressure can be ………..(Insert a looooong pause) a problem.”

Then she began the waterboarding, which was probably easier than normal for me because all I could think about was high blood pressure, how her breath caught, and how long her pause was. Since I’m usually a calm, rational guy, that wrist reading couldn’t possibly have resulted from knowing I was about to be waterboarded, poked with sharp instruments, and Cavitronned. To make matters worse, I couldn’t remember the numbers for a normal blood pressure, the numbers that indicated medication, or the numbers that meant – go to the hospital right now for a stress test. (As if going to the hospital itself wasn’t a stress test).

After the waterboarding and Cavitronation was over, I stumbled out to my car, managed to make it home without driving over any islands, cyclists, construction barrels, or parkway trees. Immediately I called my doctor to make an appointment for another physical, the second recommended pneumonia shot for those over 65, and a BLOOD PRESSURE TEST. The earliest appointment was going to be over a month away. I panicked, explained the story of my blood pressure, and the scheduler asked if I should have a nurse call me back. A half an hour later, I had a nice talk with the nurse, garbled the numbers I tried to remember, and she kindly told me I probably had them reversed. Then she said the numbers were high but not dangerously so, and I could come in to check or go to a Walgreens and they would check me. Then she said, “You know, I don’t mean to insult you or your dentist, but we don’t have that much faith in a blood pressure check by a little wrist strap. Besides, going to the dentist is like-”

“Being waterboarded,” I said.

“Well,” she said. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Have you ever had a Cavitronation?” I asked.

“Um,” she said. “No. Look, if you’re worried, come in and we’ll just check your pressure. You can also help by cutting down on salt and caffeine. Are you overweight?”

“Maybe eight pounds.” I just made up that number. It’s probably ten or fifteen pounds.

“Well, get rid of those eight pounds. Walk more. You could have the whole issue taken care of before you come in for your physical. If not, just come in for a blood pressure check.”

That’s when I realized that there was a conspiracy between dentists and general practitioners to get people to stop drinking coffee and tea. My blood pressure panic was eased by a conspiracy theory. It works every time.

Okay, I thought, I can cut down on salt. When my wife came home, I told her the whole story. She seemed upset. That’s when she reminded me that I regularly made large bowls of hot, buttered, heavily salted popcorn. Her face looked sadly popcorn-deprived.

“Well, there are salt substitutes,” I said. “After all, popcorn is an essential food group.”

That seemed to ease her concern and she said, “You know, you could be like me and use just a little salt – just on popcorn and not on anything else.”

That’s when I started going through our refrigerator. It was not a good exploration. Tomato juice – 650 milligrams of salt. OMG. I had made a crockpot the day before of slow-cooked chicken and dumplings and looked at the cans of cream of celery and cream of chicken soup and chicken broth I had used. Their salty total made the tomato juice look like it was a health food rather than the salty poison I now knew it was.

Everything I looked at – OMG – salt and more salt. Butter, sauerkraut, salad dressing, chili I made with a base of salsa, OMG the salt in potato chips, bacon, and nuts.

“Well?” My wife said.

“It looks like the only things I can eat are lettuce and oatmeal.”

My wife is a smart person. She said, “You know, this isn’t about salt.”

“It isn’t?”

“No. You’ll go to the doctor and get checked and he’ll help you take care of the problem if there really is one. Until then, you should get out of this all-or-nothing loop.”

“How can I do that?”

“Well, you can start by making some popcorn tonight.You make the best popcorn. I have some shows I’d like to binge-watch and popcorn would be nice. I’ll salt yours, though.”

True love is a wondrous thing.