(Let the nightmares begin. From here.)
Yesterday I had a root canal. It wasn't a big deal - I've had at least one before - I have terrible teeth. The journey to the root canal was what sucked.
It began about four weeks ago with some sort of unusual pain in my upper right mouth. I am a pretty zealous flosser, so I am used to sometimes irritating my gums unnecessarily. But this was different. When I had the chance to contact my dentist, I did.
Except. I don't really have a dentist. I have a corporation. My insurance - chosen by my wife because it covers situations like what was about to happen the most inexpensively - ties me to a "dental group" instead of a particular dentist. This means that, while I am "assigned" a dentist who visits me perfunctorily after my cleaning - & I sometimes think it's been more than one - I can't be sure, although I do know I have never had the same hygienist. In fact, as I walk to my room I am shocked how much the office I visit resembles a kind of nameless, faceless office building, except instead of unhappy people behind desks in tiny rooms, it's unhappy people getting their teeth cleaned in tiny rooms. Anyway, my dentist was unavailable. In fact, no one was available until well into 2022. But they did have an appointment available at a satellite location thirty miles away.
Can I just add by the way that my dentist - again, I'm not sure she's been my dentist the whole time we've been bound to this corporate feudal dentist system - decided that, against every non-corporate dentist's advice, I should get my teeth cleaned just once a year. Surely what happened might have been predicted or even prevented had I had my teeth cleaned in October as I would have had, were I allowed to have my teeth cleaned twice a year, as, like I said, every dentist in the world not employed by a dental group would insist on. Of course, my dentist (again, I barely know her) is probably encouraged not to allow such frivolities because it affects the corporation's bottom line. Anyway. Where was I?
Oh yeah, I visit the dentist thirty miles away who looks at my x-rays & shrugs & says, "I dunno. Maybe you'll need a root canal?" He says he'll refer my case to an endodontist. I knew I should have been worried when he told me his name was Dr. Fife. I should've asked if his grandfather had been a deputy sheriff in North Carolina. When I mention that I am in some pain, he said I should look into a wonder drug called ibuprofen. He is young & seems disinterested to the point of fecklessness. I am sure I am one of seven hundred people he gave terrible dental advice to that day.
Needless to say, things did not improve over the next few days. The pain became intolerable. I found that I felt less pain if I were to simply stand up & walk around, & so - to bring this back to my dumb radio show - while I was working on the Self Help Radio Christmas show, I couldn't sit for longer than a few minutes before I had to wander around the kitchen so the pain would subside. In the KBOO studios the night of the show, I walked most of the time I was on the air, sitting only to press play on the CD player or the speak into the microphone.
The Monday after my useless dentist visit, I checked in with my dental corporation to discover that my dentist (again, whoever she is) would not be in until Wednesday & she'd look over the referral then. When I mentioned that I was in a great deal of pain, they said they'd fast track the referral - which led to an appointment on January 6, over two weeks from the day of the call - but they reiterated their belief in the healing powers of the great & mysterious drug ibuprofen.
My wife, used to my whining & mostly sick of it, suggested I contact my general practitioner. So I wrote an email to her, & was contacted by OHSU folks immediately. But before that, my wife had recommended that I begin to add to my ibuprofen taking (I did take it, despite it not helping much) the drug gabapentin. But where would I get gabapentin, a drug that I assumed would need to be prescribed to me? My wife had some leftover from her neck surgery from years back but I confess I also took some from my cat Bolan. Yes, Bolan has been prescribed gabapentin for his anxiety.
By the time of my doctor's visit, where they helpfully checked to make sure whatever was causing the pain in my mouth wasn't an infection that was spreading elsewhere, I had been taking an ibuprofen & gabapentin combination that was masking the pain. My doctor - or actually a PA, since my doctor was doubtless busy & scheduled for appointments well into 2022 - agreed with my wife & gave me more gabapentin & told me to keep doing what I was doing. & the result was that I wasn't in a lot of pain but I could tell what the gabapentin was doing - it was masking the pain. I could feel a kind of throb where the pain doubtless was. It reminded me of stories in comic books where evil entities are trapped somehow in gems or behind magical barriers & threatening to return. & I didn't want the pain to return.
Listen: it got really bad. I foolishly, before the gabapentin, went down to Tualatin with my wife to pick up our dog Pauline who had to spent the night at an emergency vet's because of gastroenteritis (a whole other story). I hadn't really considered what the effects of a car ride at highway speeds through different altitudes might be for one with pain in their tooth. What I experienced was something like having a nail hammered repeatedly into my upper right jaw. At one point the radiated pain was so great I felt my right eye might just pop out of its socket. It may have been this experience - unhelpfully happening on a Saturday evening - which spurred me to seek any remedy imaginable, from the dentist if possible, from my doctor if necessary.
(Pauline is fine, by the way.)
The good news is, as I've said, the gaba/profen combination worked, & I have to tell you, I've enjoyed the gabapentin experience. It has made me a bit drowsy, to be sure, but it makes it so much easier for me to fall asleep. I often find it takes me an hour to finally trick my mind into letting me fall asleep; the past two weeks, my head has hit the pillow & I am out. If I have to wake sooner than expected, though, I am mightily confused. In one case, startled awake by a phone call, I wandered around the house looking for a person I must've been dreaming about. In another, when I had been dozing on the couch, I was wholly unable to become completely awake & surrendered to sleep in the bedroom.
My wife had a bit of a hard time weaning herself from the drug; I know I will, too.
So yeah, I went to the dentist yesterday morning & discovered I did in fact need a root canal, although I'm sure Sheriff Dr. Barney Fife got lucky with that one. I was also told by my gabby dental assistant that the endodontist specialized in root canals so I was probably going to get a root canal no matter what*. I got the needles in the gums for the numbness (injecting novocaine into my soft palate, the gruff endodontist said, "This is probably the most unpleasant part of the whole experience" but he was wrong), I got a rubber block to hold my mouth open, & I closed my eyes & had a stranger do weird things to my teeth. But I have to tell you:
The experience was a bit hallucinatory. I blame the gabapentin. I felt like I was halfway dozing through the whole thing, waking every time the dentist accidentally pinched my lip or asked me to open wide or other things I am not sure I really remember. Keeping my eyes closed the entire time, I let my brain entertain me with sometimes baffling imagery, & I reiterate that I felt like I was straddling the line between waking & sleeping. It didn't hurt that it was an upper right tooth so my head was almost aimed downward. & I confess it wasn't entirely awful. I had certainly felt a similar pain/pleasure dynamic in an acid trip or two.
In a couple of days I'll reduce the profen/gaba combo & return to normal. My gums don't hurt anymore, although chatty dental assistant did tell me "Some people find the third day after the procedure the worst." That seems weird. I told her I'd stay on my drugs past that.
Above I did mention I'd had a root canal before. I might have had more than one. I don't recall. It's been a long time. But I can't imagine they were as psychedelic as this one. I'm not even mad at dentist Barney Fife anymore. Though I will say if you find yourself in the Portland area - like, I dunno, a town called Gresham - & your corporate insurance recommends a tooth doctor of that name, I recommend that you request a different one. If there were a dentist Dr. Otis Campbell, or even a dentist Dr. Floyd The Barber, you should pick one of those over Dr. Fife. You'll be glad you did. What a fucking tool.
*He actually did explain to me why I needed the root canal. The comment above is a tribute to my Mom, who hated dentists & believed they broke your teeth while cleaning them in order to fix them later. She would've been happy to hear me say I was sent to a root canal specialist to get a root canal whether I needed one or not.
