0
0
My endodontist and I stared at my dying tooth x-ray today, two men were genuinely fascinated and disconcerted by what we were seeing there in black and white.
The base of my tooth – think tree trunk – stood up crookedly in a subtle way like the disturbing pool table in Vincent Van Gogh’s Night Cafe painting created in 1888.
Something had gone far astray and out of kilter with the roots of my tooth. It was particularly conspicuous when contrasted with the marshmallow toothtop hat that a woman could have plausibly flaunted at a Roaring 20s ballroom dance.
“You see those black lines,” said Eddie Endo. “Those aren’t supposed to be black. Those are infections. You have puddles of pernicious puss in there and that’s all pushing against the bone in your jaw like a piece of metal scratching against a classroom blackboard. You feel pain?”
“Doc I bit into a hamburger the other day and cried for an hour trying to hide from everyone the sight of an old man crying all by himself,” I said. “Today I drank ice water and it hurt so bad I ran around my house hoping to find relief in one of the rooms, which didn’t make any sense. I wasn’t thinking rationally. Had to pound painkillers and they sent me into flight for brief stints until the pain roared back.”
It was time for him to dig in. Grabbing his jackhammer, he told me to open wide and smashed the hammer down through the top of my beautiful white cap and pounded his way through the darkened and polluted Suez Canal.
I wondered what page-turning horror story he was discovering deep inside my pie hole. The jackhammer kept screaming like a scared mountain lion under attack by a pack of wolves. Down deeper, and deeper. I began to wonder if he would blast the jack straight through my chin and down through my breastplate all the way until it poked out of my back.
Once down at the unspeakable nadir, he unplugged the jackhammer, tossed it across the room as if he had hundreds of them, and snagged an excavation tool that when it got to the bottom felt like some sort of farm tool whacking away wild weeds from an Idaho potato farm. There was a nice purr sound to it and the twirling made me think of one of those old-time manual lawnmowers with a forklift on the end spinning around like a garden sprinkler. The best way to think about it was this: a farmer was doing a triple axel in ice skating.
Doc had hit the ocean floor. He was scraping up seaweed and salamanders and horseshoe crabs and parts of sunken motorboats.
“What are you seeing down there, Ed?” I asked.
“The most disgusting mess of gory and bulbous puss and sickened blood in the history of American dentistry,” he said. “I’ve done 30,000 root canals and nothing has looked more like a horror movie than yours. I’d rather watch Friday the 13th again than go in there and see one more time what I saw festering in your mouth today. I think I may need to get out of this racket.”
We were almost done.
We stared again at the x-ray but this time he drew my attention to another tooth of mine.
“See that black line,” he said. “You’ve got another root canal. I need to go all jackhammer on that one too.”
“Not today, Doc,” I said. “I gotta go write a blog about today’s root canal. But you can be sure I’ll call you the next time I want a jackhammer drilled through my mouth and an x-ray session that makes me think of Vincent Van Gogh.”
Author Profile
-
Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
Sammy Sportface Has a Vision -- Check It Out
Sammy Sportface -- The Baby Boomer Brotherhood Blog -- Facebook Page
Latest entries
ACCOctober 13, 2024Dear Dave Clawson and Wake Forest Football Players
BonusOctober 13, 2024Parking Lot Serendipity at Wake Forest Football Tailgate
Radio ShowsOctober 12, 2024NIL Will Drive Even More College Football Coaches to Behave Badly
Radio ShowsOctober 11, 2024Clawing Clemson: Feeling Good About Wake Forest Saturday