Rise above Fear!

Danger is real. Fear is an option.

I learnt this long ago in college when I had to go to the dentist for a tooth extraction.  A wisdom tooth suddenly decided to erupt, and mind you, just a few weeks before my mid-year exams!  I tried to soothe the pain by resorting to cloves and clove oil, but nothing helped.

A cavity had holed into my unborn, erupting tooth.  Even before the tooth came out properly, the pain, I suspected, was so much like a BAD cavity! But I kept trying my Dadima-Ke-Nuske in order to allay the pain, and more importantly, to avoid visiting the dreaded dentist!

In my mind, a dentist was not someone who relieved you of pain, but one who sat with his pries and ware and a toothy grin, waiting to pierce into the gums to extract the living daylights out of you! One evening, helpless with unbearable pain I pressed the pillow to my head to silence the pain.  Even the slightest creaking of the door raised sharp pain in my head. It was the devil, and I was afraid to budge.

The wiser thing to do at that point of time would be to look into the telephone directory, get the dentist’s number and pay him a visit at the earliest convenience, but I was just too reluctant and unwilling!

Next morning when the classes began I had to walk out from the classroom, and I sat outside, holding one side of my cheek and weeping profusely.  It was horrid and wicked.  Sadly I was nothing less.  I was just as stubborn. What was that saying, “Misery loves company”.  In a strange way I too was feeding my misery more fuel.  Instead of doing what was needful, all I had been doing was sit and cry! It was shameful, but that’s how it was.

In the following week, pain killers were gulped down the throat as if they were well cooked grains.  In fact, now that I mention it, for three consecutive days I had not had a morsel of food because of the pain.

Exams were only a week away and I was there sitting and cribbing.  Act, don’t react, my Papa’s words resonated in the back of my mind.  With courage that is quite inexplicable to me even I managed to go to the Out Patient Department of my college hospital the next day.  I waited for a whole twenty four minutes before the dentist called me to her chamber.

Once I went in, I thought, this is it.  Now I have to step out a health, happy and smiling person.  No more of crying or avowing food or popping pills.  And so when the dentist said that an extraction needs to be done immediately I just laid my head back in her chain resting all my faith in her and her pliers and allowing the injections numb the pain.

And just like that, in a matter of a half hour, all the dread, fear, pangs, anxiety – just went off! I went ahead and wrote my mid-term papers, and all was well with the world.  If only I was less afraid, all would have been well with the world a little sooner.  Nonetheless, I learnt a life lesson from all this – Danger is real. Fear is an option.

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