“No way! No needles! I can’t stand them!” the patient exclaims.
The dentist then reaches for the nitrous oxide, but the man immediately objects.
“No chance! I’m not doing gas either. Just thinking about the mask makes me feel like I’m suffocating!”
The dentist pauses, then asks, “How about taking a pill instead?”
“No problem at all,” the patient replies. “Pills are fine.”
The dentist hands him a pill and says, “Here’s some Viagra.”
The patient, surprised, asks, “Wait, Viagra works as a painkiller?”
“It doesn’t,” the dentist replies, “but it’ll give you something to hold onto while I pull your tooth.”
This joke plays on the patient’s extreme aversion to needles and gas, leading the dentist to a tongue-in-cheek suggestion involving Viagra, which is not a painkiller.
The punchline, implying that the Viagra is intended to give the patient something to “hold onto” during the procedure, is a humorous and unexpected twist, blending medical humor with an element of surprise. It’s a classic example of a setup where the solution to one problem (pain management) is presented with a twist that takes the listener in a completely different, amusing direction.