It Looked Different on the Model - Laurie Notaro [32]
And that took a lot of will. Not just because the last time I visited my doctor I was sent as a sacrificial lamb to the medical library, which I would say somewhat shattered my trust in prescriptions—I mean, this time I got an old doctor when I was expecting a nice, easy painkiller; next time I might think I’m getting my high-blood-pressure pills but get a life coach wearing tie-dye instead—but because I had already suffered mouth indignities and I wasn’t eager to repeat them. I had been to the dentist twice the previous week concerning a new crown I had installed (since they cost as much as appliances and I am going to start referring to them in the same manner) after the tortilla chip incident. My dentist also thought it would be a great idea to cast a mold of my mouth for a teeth-whitening tray, a procedure that took five of the most paralyzing minutes of my life and caused me to apologize aloud for my Mach 4 gag reflexes. I was so tired of people sticking their hands in my piehole that when a basket of bread sticks was placed on our table one night when we went out to dinner, my hand immediately flew up to cover my mouth and my shoulders began rolling.
So while I wasn’t that thrilled with submitting myself to another oral exam, the green-tongue thing was really freaking me out. It had begun to transform several days earlier, showing hints of a lime sort of color; the next day it dove into a deeper colorway of olive; and by the third day, when hints of brown began to appear, I picked up the phone. I brushed my tongue, I gargled with mouthwash, I rinsed with salt water and peroxide. The color kept sliding deeper into the hues of decay and decomposition, and I was afraid to let it go any longer. Actually, I was terrified that I would be talking and my tongue would flip out of my mouth and land at my feet like a dead fish.
Imagine my irritation when the first thing my doctor said after I opened my mouth and showed him my dirt patch of a tongue was, “Hmm. Show that to your grandmother.”
“What?” I asked after he removed the tongue depressor.
“Show that tongue to your grandmother,” he said. “Ask her what a Hairy Tongue is. It used to be quite common.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, even more horrified than I was when I thought my tongue was rotting.
“Means you’ve got a Hairy Tongue,” was his reply. “It’ll go away, just wait.”
“I don’t want to wait,” I replied, and stuck out my tongue again. “Burn it off. Tell me you have a torch in here.”
“Do you eat enough fiber?” he asked.
“Yes,” I assured him.
“What are your bowel movements like?” he continued. “They should be like a ri—”
“Ripe banana,” I finished.
“Here’s a recipe for some bran muffins,” he said, plucking it out of the organizer on the wall. “Get ripe.”
On the way home I contemplated whether I could seriously live with this Hairy Tongue in my mouth or if I should try to look into prosthetics. I didn’t want it in my mouth. I still didn’t know what it was, how I got it, or when it was going to go away.
I was upset about it all day, and I didn’t know how I wasn’t going to chew it off in my sleep at night. I looked at it again before I went to bed and brushed my teeth and was just repulsed. I couldn’t sleep with that brown slug in my mouth. Here I was, trying to make my old smoker’s teeth whiter, and now to have this filthy rug in the middle of them.
And that’s when the lightbulb went on.
The next day, I waited patiently, patiently, patiently, and as soon as the clock struck 9:00 A.M., I picked up the phone and dialed.
“Dr. O’Hara’s office,” the receptionist said.
“Hi, this is Laurie; I was in there