toothache, part 2: the root canal

The cavity -- which, weirdly enough, hadn't bothered me until yesterday -- had eaten all the way through to the nerve. It took them about three exhausting hours to numb the tooth, open it up, and scrape out all the pulp. Ew, that scraping sound. Worse than that, though, was that my jaw muscles started cramping about halfway through. They gave me a couple of breaks, when it looked like I was about levitate off of the dental chair . . . but I really had no choice but keep on going. I will never have this done again without nitrous.

The most disconcerting and creepy part of the whole experience, however, was the chaos of the overcrowded office itself. The doctors, staff, and supplies were clearly stretched to the breaking point. Quite a few conversations between my dentist and the assistant took the form of: "Could you get me that xyz123 thing?" "We don't have any." "How can we be out? Did you look in that drawer?" "We were supposed to get some last week but we never go them." "Ok, do you have an abc321 thing?" "No, we're all out of those too." "Well, can you make an xyz123 thing out of a bcd231 thing?"

Yikes!

At one point I stood in line for the x-ray room, with a sheet of latex attached to the outside of my mouth, four or five long metal needles crammed into my tooth, and drooling uncontrollably due to the black rubber block that was being used to hold my mouth open -- in full view of the waiting room, no less. How Matthew Barney-esque -- if only I'd been naked!