Notes On A Root Canal

I realize the continuing saga of my root canal is not nearly as exciting as O.J. in the Bronco, Balloon Boy, or efforts to cap an ocean-floor-bound gushing oil well with a 100 ton concrete hat, but after the thirty minutes of howling pain I endured today, you'll just have to indulge me. The actual procedure, as I claimed yesterday, was not bad at all. I just sat there with my eyes closed, in my mind walking in the park mumbling Hail Mary, while the doctor and his assistant did their work. Not quite a literal walk in the park, but not hell, either. Afterward, I even thanked the doctor for a rather pleasant root canal, a half-heartfelt attempt to be the first person ever to append that adjective to the procedure. He kind of chuckled and warned me to wait until the anesthesia wore off, then rushed away rather quickly, I thought. Well, doc ain't no dummy, because just about the time I was pressing the down button on the elevator outside his office, the pain started to rise. And rise. My short drive home was a mad rush to get to two Advil capsules. Once I inhaled them I was a pacin' and cussin' fool, rooting those liqui-gel capsules home like a railbird with next month's paycheck riding on a win bet for a nag named Ibuprofen. Turned out to be a race for trotting, not galloping, but within a half hour Toothache was broken and corralled and I was soon sleeping like a newborn foal on a bed of hay.

The experience got me thinking a bit, between prayers, though. I'm sure I've written before about my lifetime debate about whether blindness or deafness would be worse. I've always said that while blindness would be a horrible incovenience, a world without music and conversation would be insanity, and though my track record doesn't always show it, I much prefer inconvenience to insanity. But my belief was weakened a bit in the dental chair today. Although I mostly kept my eyes shut, out of an admittedly infantile notion that what can't be seen doesn't exist, at times I did peek, and although doc and assistant shuffled all kinds of gnarly looking instruments back and forth between each other and my mouth, the sight of none of them really gave me the heebie jeebies. But, open eyed or shut, the sound of those things was terrifying. Obviously, anyone who's seen a scary film knows the horrific heft music can bring to the fright, but really, the sound of those drills and God knows what else, so close to the ears, was unnerving to the nth degree. I wonder if giving the patient some earplugs or headphones with Black Sabbath blaring might not help ease the tension some. I mean, after all, you don't really need to hear anything. You can't talk with everything in your mouth, so conversation's out, and if the dentist is worried if you're doing okay, well, I think flinging yourself out of the chair, raising your arms to strangle him or her or yourself, or simply howling past all the hardware in your mouth would get the job done. So, in certain circumstances, I concede, deafness over blindness.

Irrigate. That one word, repeated about twenty times, accounted for most of the talk during my root canal. The dentist would say, "irrigate," and then from my left the assistant would shove a tube in my mouth for a second or two. What a weird and beautiful word. Where does it come from? I'm going to start using it in all sorts of instances. When I'm sitting at the bar and in need of another beer, I'll just look at the bartender, point to my empty, and say, "irrigate." Walking off the eighteenth hole, I'll turn to my golfing companions, as they're digging in their pants for the money they owe me, and say, "Boys, how about a little irrigation," and point to the nineteenth hole. When I'm at some picnic and somebody with a water balloon sneaks up behind the person I'm speaking to, I'll just nod slightly and say, "irrigate." When I'm sitting around all sweaty and grimy after some physical exertion, I'll simply make a nominal gesture of sniffing my armpits and announce to anyone present, "Time for some irrigation, don't you think?"

That's it. With Advil happily ensconced in my blood system, I believe the root canal saga is over, with a blissful whimper, and not a horrible bang: I'm still ambivalent about being either deaf or blind, and I now cherish the word irrigate. Oh, and I will floss more regularly.