Recently I went to see the dentist and was told I would need a root canal.
All things considered, this is not the sort of thing I love to hear. Very few people -- I should imagine the number is less than ten thousand -- go to the dentist for a six-month checkup saying to themselves, "I hope I can get a root canal. I've always wondered what they feel like." Those few that do have some serious issues when it comes to getting their pleasure and pain signals mixed up.
This root canal had its roots in a cavity that had struck my lower left rear molar, or rather, that had restruck. An earlier filling had fallen out after years of hitting the Coca-Cola bottle too many times a day had taken their toll. The cavity was back, bigger and uglier than ever, and it was right along the gumline.
Two things happened as a result of this dental pronouncement. First was that I not only kicked the Coke habit, I kicked it hard and right out the door. I have had a few bottles since then, but it's been nowhere near the levels I had reached before, where I could sometimes go through a twelve-pack in two days. (As a result of this change, the Coca Cola bottling plant near us has announced layoffs, and our savings account has been reaching new heights.) The second is that I went for a second opinion.
Back when we first moved to Nova Bastille and we were on my insurance plan, I started seeing a dentist in the downtown. It was a small practice, and parking is an issue, but the dentist we saw when I was a child had his own practice, and I just plain like the experience of establishing a rapport with the fellow who's going to be sticking sharp instruments into my mouth and poking around every six months.
About two years ago, we switched over to the insurance policy provided by my wife's employer, and at my insistence, the whole family got on the dental wagon. (A good thing too, since Evangeline somehow had managed to develop three cavities by the age of 5, although she's been clean since.)
Remember how I said I grew up seeing a dentist with his own practice and preferred that? Well, I guess each of us likes what we grew up with. Natasha grew up attending one of those large corporate dental offices where you never know whom you're going to get because the staff roster is larger than the population of some Central American nations, and she insisted that we take our business to such an establishment -- and to her credit, parking is easier, and the office doesn't close when one dentist is on vacation.
Still, I can't help it. When a dentist I've never seen before is telling me I need a root canal and offers to give me a prescription in the meantime to control the pain she assumes my tooth is causing me -- when it doesn't hurt at all -- I can't help but feel wistful for a more personal touch.
I'm kind of crazy that way. It's kind of like wanting to get a person when I call a company's customer service hot line, instead of having to wade through a soulless computer program that connects me with an illiterate bean farmer in Rhode Island when all I want to know is whether my pants make me look fat.
So I went and got a second opinion, at my old dentist. His opinion? A root canal would be nuts. Based on the X-ray the other practice sent, and what he could see by looking into the old lion's jaws, I just had a cavity that was low to the gum.
So I called the insurance company, and after being connected to three different bean farmers in Rhode Island, most of them illiterate, I finally changed my dentist back to the guy it should have been all along and made my appointment.
A little Novacaine, a little drilling, and then some filling, and whammo! No more cavity.
And no more root canal.
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