the root of the problem...

I suppose I should be grateful that I prolonged it as long as I did. When I first moved to Colorado back in 'o4 and saw a dentist for the first time in, oh, two years. He gave me two fillings with the promise of, "Oops, that one's kinda deep, you're going to have a root canal within the year." I made it to 2010, Ladies and Gentlemen; no root canal. I was kind of hoping I had permanently averted disaster. Alas. No such luck. I went in for my check-up and my new dentist said, "You're teeth look great." I thought to myself, "Nice, I'm still good." Then she added, "but I'm going to go ahead and recommend that you go to an endodondist though and get those back two, 14 and 15 evaluated. Looks like you might need a root canal on at least one of them." Shit. I knew it was too good to be true.

I'll give you the synapse of the previous week and bring you up to where I'm sitting now with an aching jaw and left side facial droop that has people stopping me on the sidewalk and asking if I just had a stroke.

Endodontist said, "Yup, we're going to have to do a root canal on 15" (For those of you non-dental type people, that's far back top left.) It was scheduled for last Friday. It went well enough. I didn't love it but it wasn't the worst pain I'd ever felt, but please keep in mind the bridge jump disaster Summer of '04, for your score card. The anesthetics made me all tweaky and sick to my stomach and of course I was fully aware of my jaw and every muscle attached till Sunday.

Wednesday of this week, my dentist planned on crowning me. The receptionist asked me to come in earlier so they could redo the filling on 14 while they were at it. Shot up once again, jaw unhinged so completely I'm pretty sure they could see the contents of my stomach. The dentist starts on 14 and realizes its worse than the x-rays revealed. Damn x-rays. "You're not going to like this but you're going to have to get a root canal on 14 too." Ugh. She calls the endodontist and immediately schedules a root canal for this morning at 8:30am. More jaw shots, more unhinging of the jaw and I don't know if anyone else has experienced this but utter and complete increasing pain on the back of my skull as it rests on the seat, unable to move my neck and readjust. Whatever they used to clean made my mouth smells like I'd just licked the bottom of a swimming pool. I also had to pee 15 minutes into the procedure so that by the time they were nearly finished I could taste urine as well as smell chlorine.

So here I sit in the present. Full mobility of the right side of my face and as I try to slurp some much needed food into my belly. The soup slithers across my lips and down my chin like an unruly snake. I try to catch the escaping drips, face unequally scrunched like a contortionist. Its a challenge because I don't quite feel them until they've reached the un-numb portion of my chin. I need a bib or a mirror.

I believe the moral of the story is: just don't go to the dentist. Maybe mom was right all along...just swish with charcoal water, or liquid vitamin or whatever concocted swill she came across or invented. They were all better than this.