Isn
’t it strange how some of the best things for us to do are
things we want to do the least?
Isn’t it strange how some of the best things for us to do are things we want to do the least?
For example: Last week I was not a happy girl. Inside my mouth, a white-knuckled kind of hurting was sending shock waves upward, threatening to blow off the top of my head. Several days of this distress brought my behavior to a chronic state of crankiness, causing my husband to search our marriage certificate for signs of a loophole.
I thought I had canker sores.
Talk about denial – I stubbornly held onto the canker sores theory. Although I was unable to actually see anything in the nether regions of my mouth, I knew they were there. Hundreds of them. As the throbbing radiated up my cheekbone into my temple and reverberated in my eye socket, I knew that this was temporary. If I ignored it, it would go away.
By about day nine the light was dawning, and my aching mouth and I went downtown for an overdue visit with my dentist. Some shadowy business appearing in the x-ray confirmed I needed the Big Daddy of dreaded dental procedures: a root canal. This did little to elevate my happiness factor.
Let’s be honest here. Large-scale tooth procedures aren’t something we pay for with loose pocket change we find between the sofa cushions. Unfortunately, we tend to take better care of our cars than we do our teeth. We spend money like water on home electronics centers and vacations. Personally, I mourned the yummy facials, mudpacks and spa visits that this outlay to my dentist would have procured.
Twenty-four hours later at his office, I was ready to sign over the house to him.
I hadn’t a clue what the next 60 minutes would entail, but I was crying “Uncle,” desperate for relief. This root canal was my first, but extractions aren’t an option for me as I’ve grown quite (literally) attached to my teeth. I know that with proper care they can last a lifetime, and I am fighting to keep every single one of my pearly whites in tact.
Reclined headfirst in the dental chair like a Space Shuttle astronaut, I welcomed the anesthetic the way a drowning man seizes a life raft. As this miracle of modern medicine spread through my system I wondered, incredulously, why I’d waited so long for relief.
I shut my eyes and gave myself up to the experience. The sum of my being was focused on one tiny bit of real estate in the upper left side of my mouth. I was stunned that there was no pain – just some pressure and the usual noise from some pretty sophisticated dental tools.
Barely an hour later, he had finished the canal and inserted a temporary filling.
“You did good,” my dentist congratulated me.
“No, YOU did good,” I corrected him, or at least that’s what I meant to say. Blessed numbness was having its effect on my speaking abilities.
Deprived of the pleasures of hot and cold foods for over a week, I hurried to my favorite coffee place for the latte I’d been denied for so long.
“Mmnnhm Nahfffhhhaa Lahhhlaaa,” I cheerily requested of the young lady behind the counter.
“Excuse me?” she asked. Not to be deterred, I tried again, but this time she was tuned in to my new dialect.
“Ohhhh…you want a medium nonfat latte?” Ecstatically, I nodded in the affirmative. She turned on her magic machine as I waited in a rapture of anticipation.
Drooling, undoubtedly, down the front of my sweater, I’d never been so happy.
Gale Hammond is a 22-year resident of Morgan Hill
