so i get into the office this morning for another fun and exciting week of intrigue and suspense. i grab a sesame bagel that's delivered fresh to the office every monday and toast it up a bit. i lay out some cream cheese careful not to burn my fingers. the fancy coffee maker whizzes away and fills the room with the smell of hazelnut. i walk to my desk and check the emails on my computer, quickly separating the crap from the useful messages. it's a tasty bagel. crusty shell. chewy and aromatic inside. the cream cheese adds a luxurious touch to a morning staple. then it changed. a sharp pain from the lower right side of my jaw. it stays. lingers. maybe a seed stuck in-between a molar. but it intensifies as i chew. the pain throbs. and then i bite into something hard, like a small pebble. was it a big chunk of salt or something? i tongue the fragment out to the front of my mouth and place it on my finger. what the hell is this? it's smooth on one side and jagged on the other. no, not salt. much too hard to be salt. but as i see the smooth side shine against the light, the horror of truth struck me. nothing shines like tooth enamel. a piece of my molar had chipped off. i'm not sure how much you know about your teeth but tooth enamel is the strongest substance in your body. think about all the chewing and biting that you do and all the wear and tear it goes through. but as strong as it is, it's also brittle. there's another layer under tooth enamel called dentin, which acts like a shock absorber for when you bite. i remember seeing my relatives eat shellfish (without any sort of tools whatsoever) and using only their teeth to crack through the hard shells of dungeness crabs. i'd be both shocked and curiously fascinated at such a display. after i finished that mouthful of bagel i went to tongue over the tender areas of my jaw. i knew immediately which tooth was chipped. it was the first molar next to my wisdom tooth that was coming in. i whispered an expletive to myself. most folks need to have their wisdom teeth removed because it usually grows in slanted. imagine your teeth as people standing in a line. now if everyone's standing up straight and behaving themselves, the line looks nice. no one's screaming or poking anyone else. a wisdom tooth that grows in straight is just another kid on the line. no problems. but a slanted wisdom tooth is like an unruly bully. it pushes the kid next to him. makes him feel bad about himself. screams for attention. and because he's pushing the kid next to him, that kid pushes the next kid and so forth. the nice line starts to look squeezed. crooked. the only solution is to remove that bully from the line. my wisdom teeth have been coming in for years - probably since my mid twenties. but it's been a slow process. there was the initial teething pain when the tooth was breaking through the surface of the gum line. but that subsided. most of the pain i remember after that involved more of the tooth coming through the gums. and all the while i'd hear stories from my siblings and friends about "extractions" - having one, two, sometimes all four wisdom teeth taken out. words like "swelling," "numb," "vicodin" filled my ears. i've always been deathly afraid of the dentist. it's probably why i've always worked hard to make sure i've never gotten a cavity. the thought of a hot drill in my mouth, grinding away mere millimeters from some of the most sensitive tissue in my body would be all the motivation i needed. the dentist i went to was just down the street from the office. he came highly recommended by a friend here. i didn't know what to expect but i trusted her judgement. when you have a dental emergency you really can't afford to lollygag around - especially when you're being hammered with a dreadful pain in your mouth. the doctor took a quick x-ray and saw immediately what was causing the problem. yes, my wisdom tooth was indeed coming in sideways and impacting the rest of my teeth. yes, it needs to come out. but that wasn't the cause of my pain today. he believes food to have gotten trapped under the wisdom tooth and the molar under it, causing that molar to decay. "see this dark spot here?" i nod because there's no way to talk with a suction tube hanging from your mouth. "that's a huge cavity." disbelief. denial. "half of this tooth has decayed." disgust. anger. "the pain is because the bacteria has spread into the nerve." shock. confusion. "and you're going to need a root canal." absolute fear. he would explain to me that the tooth fragment chipping off was due to the decay. the good news was that the molar could be saved. the bad news was that, well, you can't really get much worse in the world of dental care than a root canal. he showed me a diagram on the wall which described in surprisingly vague detail about what the procedure entails. 29 years without a single cavity. and now i need a root canal because of the first one. how ironic. i quickly think of my molar on the lower left side of my jaw. that wisdom tooth is coming in slanted as well. could the same predicament that's befallen my right molar effect the left as well? the dentist explained how he'd have to drill to remove the decay and to clear a path to the nerve. he tried to be as informative as possible without inciting the "ew" factor inherent in all of us. "i'll be giving you lidocaine to dull the pain. take a deep breath when i tell you to." maybe it was the light in my face. maybe it was his years of effortless experience. but i didn't even see the needle going in nor did i feel it. "give it about ten or fifteen minutes for the anesthetic to kick in." i could feel the numbness set in. a dull tingling feeling. it was almost as though i had a wintergreen lifesaver wedged into that spot in my mouth - but without the sweetness. the thoughts that raced through my mind. how i simply couldn't believe that i was about to have this horrible procedure done when all my life i had taken care of my teeth. up until today, the most unpleasant procedure i ever had done was a rigorous cleaning from a rough dentist. as he prepared his tools all i could think of was the drill we used back at the lab while performing surgery on rodents. the drill bits of different sizes and shapes. the foot pedal. the betadine and alcohol. suture kits. disposable scapels with #10 blade heads. i remember watching sit-coms and reading about how your face undergoes partial paralysis when you're shot up with lidocaine or some other local anesthetic. people would have droopy faces or slur their speech. sometimes they'd even drool. i now was experiencing this first hand. in some strange way you could find it funny - the sudden new lisp i never had before. the inability to contract any muscle on the right side of my face. but my amusement was cut short when the dentist returned. "would you like to watch?" he asked this as he held a hand mirror in front of my face. i just looked at him. "no? most people say no. hahaha... if at any time you feel pain, raise your left hand." i closed my eyes and i listened to the drill run. the funny thing was that although i could hear it grinding at my tooth, i couldn't feel it. it was as though i were listening to some other poor soul in the same room getting their teeth drilled. i had to open my eyes again when fluid started accumulating in the back of my mouth. i gently tapped his hand to make him stop. "are you ok? alright, rinse." i closed my mouth for an instant to catch my breath. i took a drink of water from the cup next to me and spit into the tiny basin. there was a chunk of my molar with the rotting cavity in plain view. "that's it. that's the decay." all i could do was shake my head and i leaned back into the chair for the next round. i kept my eyes open this time and tried to remember to breath through my nose. what i saw and smelled horrifyed me even more. "can you smell the decay?" it was a putrid rancid smell. i tried to imagine the clear path that must've existed from the tooth wall into the root. and as he drilled more, i could see the smoke rising out of my extended mouth. this is what happens when you don't take care of wisdom teeth that are coming in sideways. now because it was impacting against another tooth, it was trapping food and asorted things at the base of that tooth. over time, the enamel there was eaten away by bacteria, resulting in a perfectly healthy tooth rotting out from the side. with the decayed segment of the tooth removed, he started the root canal. no special tools here. no fancy contraptions or what have you. he took what looked like a stubby drill bit and drove into the socket. since i was competely numb (thank fucking god) i could only infer what he was doing by how my jaw and neck moved. within seconds he was done. one more final rinse with a suprisingly low amount of blood, and it was over. he took what looked like a strip of cotton and packed it into the wound, followed by some sort of gum-like material to seal the top. "there. the rot is gone. how do you feel?" this dentist was fantastic. his hands were sure and certain. he warned me of what to expect and made sure i felt as little pain as humanly possible. if one had to go through such a traumatic procedure, he was the one to perform it. "now remember not to chew on that side of your mouth for a while." he wrote me some prescriptions and made special efforts to avoid the more notorious pain killers like pergaset. "you'll need to come back for a crown on that molar. and to get that wisdom tooth out." i reminded him that the lower left wisdom tooth might also need to come out. and that there might be an insideous cavity in the molar next to it as well. he nodded and shot me a gentle smile. "one step at a time." i used to have an enormous fear of dentists. but then again, i've never had a dentist quite like this one. most of the ones i had seen in the past were at community clinics or of the chinatown variety that always seemed more interested in volume than inidivual patient care. in his office you'd find life-sized busts of marvel super hero characters. spiderman is at one corner. wolverine in another. there's a picture of his daughter in a starwars constume. a television is in the reception area playing "the pursuit of happyness." he's a quirky fellow. but every bit the gentle professional my co-worker made him out to be. ha. and so the transformation continues. now that i have a "real' job again, i'm covered by insurance. a root canal would've cost a thousand dollars without insurance. now it's but a fraction of that cost. the same goes for my glasses. april 2, 2007. the day i discover my first cavity. it's also the same day i get my first root canal. ha.. | 
