Yes, well, yesterday I was convinced I was going in for a patch-job, just a quick touch-up on an old wisdom tooth way back in the furthest reaches of my mouth. Nice day, I biked there, about 30 minute ride.
I got in the chair, you know, I love my Dentist, he's a cool guy, no b.s. total pro, so I always take the chair with confidence. He took one look in my mouth a declared: "I have to take it out." I looked up at the ceiling, there are beautiful little cherubs and angels painted up there, pretty nice ceiling, I gulped and said in reply: "Okay! Let's do it."
I got in the chair, you know, I love my Dentist, he's a cool guy, no b.s. total pro, so I always take the chair with confidence. He took one look in my mouth a declared: "I have to take it out." I looked up at the ceiling, there are beautiful little cherubs and angels painted up there, pretty nice ceiling, I gulped and said in reply: "Okay! Let's do it."
I was sort of attached to that tooth, and for sure it was attached to me. Had it in my head most of my life. But it was a wreck of a tooth. Filled over the years, many times. A while back the filling fell out, and it's been an empty, edgy, sharp and spiky husk of a tooth. If I checked with my tongue it brought up images of a bomb crater, reminded me of my visit to the Meteor Crater in AZ. That was a trip from eons ago.
He zapped me with some novocaine, I barely felt the pinch of the needle, and I numbed up right way. Then he brought out those sophisticated tools: tongs, and pliers. YIKES. He told me I would feel some pressure, and I did, but after a bit of determined rooting around, he expertly extracted that thing and laid it on the tray next to me.
He showed it to me. It was a total lost cause of a tooth. A nasty old thing, discolored, decayed. It looked like a burned out and beaten up alien being. Even St. Jude, Patron Saint of hopeless cases, and lost causes, couldn't do a thing for that total wreck of a tooth. The blood started to flow from the hole in my mouth, the Dentist wadded up some cotton and I chomped down on it to stem the red tide. I could feel the new landscape, lots of new empty space in the further reaches of my head. Talk about a clearing.
This morning a bit sore, don't think I can chew anything, maybe just sip liquids and and drink warm soup. I feel empty, distant. Changed. It was only a tooth, and terrible tooth too, but it was mine. Now gone. Just a wound now, hopefully already beginning the process of healing. And you wonder about the marvel of our bodies, how they can absorb a cut, blow, a wound and begin the process of repair almost immediately. I feel a bit "inward" this morning. A gathering of my all forces and energies. A necessary physical and mental healing.
Yes, going to the Dentist can be a profound experience. I do think so. One less tooth in my head, but clearer, cleaner, and well, really as my Dentist said, that tooth was just a trouble-maker waiting for it's time to create mischief. I feel like I've dropped some baggage that was really doing nothing for me. Now just a memory, a ghost, a chimera of an old, wasted tooth. Goodbye old friend...
