Flying Blind

Root canals have a very bad rep. People are truly pitying when you tell them you have to have one. Yesterday afternoon I had my first. I went to an endodontist (in Greek, "endo" means inside, and "odont" means "tooth"). Something had gone wrong inside one of my teeth.

I will not go into details--I can't because I didn't see what went on and felt very little--but it was a weird experience. I was anxious as I drove to my appointment, telling myself to breathe deeply. When I opened the door to the waiting room, I was deeply reassured: all was new and plush, color-coordinated in deep forest green and burgundy with a blush of red. A suave parabola of granite for the reception counter, a pair of blase receptionists (implication: nothing ever goes wrong). This was the Business Class of endodontists.

My treatment room had a floor-to-ceiling window and a second-floor view of trees and houses. I had fantastically comfortable chair that went flat and much leg room. Then the endodonist appeared, and we got down to the matter of my tooth. He demonstrated that the nerve was dead. I felt a (psychological) pang and signed papers agreeing to the procedure, which was very efficiently carried out, the drilling, x-rays, more drilling, a computer that measured the roots of my tooth, the doctor telling me each step of the way what he was doing. This was a bit like a pilot telling you every button/lever/switch he's manipulating in the cockpit, and really, I preferred not to know. I kept my eyes shut, tended by him and his deft assistant.

It all went smoothly, but pinned down in that chair, mouth clamped open, with a blue plastic "napkin"shielding the rest of my mouth from whatever was going on, I had a certain amount of worry about a) being trapped, and b) the possibility of an earthquake, The Big One, happening just when the deep recesses of my gum were exposed. What would I do with no one to put it all back together? (Jerry thinks I am the only person in the world to worry about an earthquake during a root canal.)

The trust we put in these people! The first thing I said after they removed the clamp and the blue plastic napkin was "How long does it take to learn how to do one of those?" The doctor said, "Three years beyond dental school." I asked what would happen if I hadn't had the root canal done, and he said eventually the nearby bone would deteriorate and the tooth would fall out. I thought of a quilting book I have about pioneers who were quilters, women who all seemed to have caved-in mouths.

So it's done. Wasn't I brave?