Spent part of tonight reading up on when you might use a bleach irrigation in dentistry and bleach poisoning (aka wasting time with the Internet).

Turns out my dentist wasn’t trying to actual kill me, just irritate me. Bleach is considered an irritant not a poison, and even a small child can survive swallowing a bit. In adults, though, the gagging, retching, vomiting reflex kicks in harder (that’s why I know now that I am grown up).

Irritant it sure is that bleach. My throat is still sore and burn-y tasting and it’s been about 12 hours since the attempted murder. Oh, I mean attempted/succesful irritation.

By the way, the visual I left out of the anecdote below — Me, prone in a dental chair and hemmed in by the spit sink on one side and the tool tray on the other, emitting strange gurgling noises as a prelude to more conventional pre-puking sounds. Very Mount St. Helens. The dentist, rushing to grab the wastebasket and inserting it between me and the spit sink in case the technicolor yawn eruption was to exceed the spitting in the sink volume.

Even while I was retching, I mentally registered the huge nasty factor of your dentist anticipating the need for a wastebasket hurl.

At the end of the appointment, I entertained myself by accusing him of murder and asking if a Google search would reveal a path of dental deaths and his picture.