What's So Fucking Funny About Nitrous Oxide?

"Say ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..."

She said, "My boy, I think someday
You'll find a way
To make your natural tendencies pay
You'll be a dentist
You have a talent for causin' things pain
Son, be a dentist
People will pay you to be inhumane!"


~ Little Shop of Horrors


Ugh. I did not have a good day at the dentist yesterday.

Why do they call it laughing gas? HUH? WHY??? There was nothing funny about it.

I went in at noon for an extraction. I was given an Ativan to calm my hysteria nerves, then they hooked me up to the nitrous oxide, putting the hard plastic mask over my mouth and nose. After a few minutes I still didn’t feel anything, though, and I told him the nitrous oxide wasn’t working. I didn’t feel relaxed at all; could he please turn it up?

He did. Aaaaaaand that's where my troubles started.

It was just a tingling sensation at first, and only in my hands. But it quickly went from tingly sensation to terrifying paralysis, and I looked down to see my fingers had all gnarled into my palms and my hands were bent in at my wrist. I tried to open my hands, but they wouldn’t move. They wouldn’t MOVE.

“Excuse me,” I called to the Dental Assistant, who was just a few feet away. “I can’t feel my hands.”

“Oh, it’s normal to have some tingling in your hands,” she said over her shoulder as she continued prepping for the surgery.

“No, it’s more than that,” I said, as the pressure in my hands began to build at such a rapid pace, I was surprised to look down and see that my fingers hadn’t swollen to the size of sausages.

“There’s nothing wrong,” she assured me, but I started to feel more and more desperate. She just kept bustling about, preparing instruments, until suddenly my body started to shake so violently that my novel and my iPhone slipped from my lap and went clattering to the floor.

“My hands,” I gasped. “They’re going to explode. They’re going to explode!”

“I’ll get the doctor,” she finally conceded, and left my little cubby hole.

The sensation was getting worse; the pressure I was feeling in my hands was unbearable. As Dr. M walked down the hall towards me, I started screaming, “Please help me! Please help me!” and waving my gnarled hands in the air.

Dr M hurried into the room and reached over me to switch off the laughing gas, so that I just had oxygen coming through. I was still shaking violently and staring at him in a wild eyed panic as he took my hands and gently pried them open and closed. After a few minutes the pressure started to recede a bit, and with great embarrassment I mumbled an apology and buried my face under the mask. I hoped I would just pass out. Or die.

Dr. M decided we should get started, since I was obviously such a model patient. Of course, as terrified as I was to use the nitrous oxide again, I was more frightened NOT to use it, so I asked him to turn it back on again, but on low, which he did.

I lasted for a good while, until I had just one more chunk of the broken tooth to be pulled. Then things went downhill again, fast. The pressure in my hands was growing again, and I had broken into a excessive cold sweat. I had the icky feeling that I know only too well - my blood pressure was plummeting. I started to panic again. The pressure in my hands was back to exploding level and despite the freezing cold sweat that was drenching me, I was so hot I thought I was going to suffocate. So while Dr M tried to remove the last of my tooth, I tried to remove my clothing, right there in the cubicle, on the reclining dentist’s chair. My sense of panic was so great, I was certain that I was going to faint if I didn’t get some relief from the heat and the terror right now. I tore at my jeans and yanked my sweatshirt up to my chin, until Dr M started freaking out too.

“Kage, you must stop moving!” he said sternly, trying to sew up my stitches, while I was trying to pull my sweater over my head. When that didn’t work I reached down to my waist and unbuttoned my jeans and tried to push them down. The dental assistant grabbed my hands, then called in a few other technicians to help hold me down. That's how they finally finished.

Turns out going to the dentist is EXACTLY the way Steve Martin said it is.