Something funny popped up on my calendar a couple of days ago. It was an appointment reminder for an endodontist for a root canal I had a year ago. What was funny? I had that same tooth pulled almost a year to the day after that root canal. Does irony bite or what? Had to say it. My brain won’t stop me.
Just over a year ago, a tooth that I had a root canal decades ago started giving me trouble. Translated, the pain was making me cry like a baby. I was having an abscess at the bottom of one of the roots and it had to be addressed. I tried to ignore it as long as I could but my wife got really tired of my whimpering and using my toothache to garner sympathy and told me to get my butt out of my lounge chair and take care of it. That was a real bite in the a**. Sorry, I can’t stop.
My curse is, I knew exactly what was happening. I was a dental assistant when I was in the Army and I didn’t need to go to the dentist to know what was going on. Fortunately, my dentist is a friend of mine but 120 miles from my house. I moved a few years ago but decided it was worth the drive to go to a dentist who wasn’t trying to convince me to spend 10s of thousands of dollars on getting a smile that looks like a box of Chicklets gum. As long as I can chew my food with my own teeth, I really don’t care what my smile looks like. I’ll just grow my mustache a bite longer. That’s why those pictures of Civil War Generals showed them with mustaches down to the bottom of their chin…bad choppers. Did you ever see one with a big toothy grin, nope. Again, bad choppers. Prove me wrong.
My dentist is the one who did the original root canal on this tooth back in the day of big hair and electronic music. The fact that the tooth lasted as long as it did was a shock. When I got in his chair to have it checked out, he asked if I wanted to try to save the tooth. He presented me with all the scenarios and after about 3 seconds of consideration, I said yes. Unfortunately he couldn’t do the new root canal and sent me off to the endodontist, a specialist on such procedures.
My visit to the endodontist was kind of like the movie “The Marathon Man.” What do you mean you’ve never seen it? Laurence Olivier, the bad guy, chases Dustin Hoffman all over New York City with a dental drill. His m.o. is to do dental work on his victims without novacane until the victim spills the beans. When the endodontist started drilling, I started spouting national security secrets, even though I don’t know any. Who cares if we don’t have any troop movements in Bolivia, as long as he stops the torture. It turns out my root canal was painless and the dentist made me quite comfortable. Too bad for all the American soldiers in Bolivia who’s positions have been exposed.
A couple of weeks later I was back in the chair of my regular dentist being fitted for a new crown. I asked him if he needed any information on troop movements and he passed. He let me know everything he was doing didn’t even require a shot of pain killer. All the studying of our involvement in Bolivia just went to waste.
He did a little cleaning up of the site and had me bite down on some gooey, rubbery material to get an impression of the area. It was like chewing on Silly Putty. A bad habit I might have done as a child but gave up a couple of years ago. You didn’t know there was a support group for that, did you. A cast of my mouth was to be made, a new crown built, and he called me back when it was ready. I was concerned that the dental lab was on a cargo ship off of Long Beach and my new crown would be caught in the backed up supply chain. My wife just informed me that using that joke four times is three times too many. Cracks me up every time, kind of like that tooth of mine.
He also sent me home with a warning. The tooth we were trying to save is in pretty bad shape and don’t be surprised if one of the over treated roots crack, leading to one thing, extraction. I’m not talking about the extraction of our troops from Bolivia, no, the pulling of the offending tooth. I need to dig up some new and important secrets to help avoid that.
My repaired tooth did just fine…for about a year. I must have bitten on something to cause it to start acting up again. I thought I could tough it out until my next cleaning appointment which was a month away. A few mornings later I woke up and it felt like my jaw got hit by a sledge hammer. I checked with my wife and she swore she didn’t hit me in the face with a sledge hammer during the night (never know), so I called my dentist for an emergency appointment.
The next day I was in his dental chair and he was doing his best Laurence Olivier on me and pulling out the painful tooth. I knew I should have been prepared with some juicy secrets.
I am in recovery now and following the dental assistants instructions. No drinking with straws, no rinsing and spitting, only soft foods and nothing with seeds. Have to avoid dislodging the blood clot that will promote healing. I was a bit confused. I used to give the same instructions to patients when I assisted on a tooth extraction in the Army, but one thing we included was “no alcohol.” When I brought that up, the assistant said alcohol was fine, as long as I didn’t drink my beer through a straw. They know how to kill a good time.
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