Learning lessons the hard way

Fifteen years ago, I had a root canal.

Three months ago, I bit down on something and felt excrutiating pain in that tooth’s area. Dentist sent me to endodontist who retreated the root canal. Told me I could expect discomfort for a while. Didn’t know how much was normal so I mentioned when I sent in my final payment that it still bothered me. She asked me to come back and said it must be fractured because there was infection and that shouldn’t be if it was healing.

I have never had a dental procedure that I can remember hurting after the anesthesia was administered.

Until yesterday.

I received what would be considered a normal amount of shots but expressed concern that I could still feel the area around the tooth that needed to be extracted. Dentist gave me more shots. Still numbing was not complete. She then did some intra-tooth-nerve drillings that sent me out of my chair, but enabled her to shoot anesthesia more directly into the area. She did this three times. I was sweating. Literally and figuratively. Said the infection was sucking up the anesthesia and that’s why it wasn’t working like normal and why I needed so much. Called it a ‘hot tooth.’

And then she started the pulling process. Oh my, oh my, oh my. If I could put words to the pain, I would. The assistant was holding my hand, rubbing my shoulder, but mostly allowing me to squeeze bruises into her forearm. The dentist repeated over and over, “keep breathing, keep breathing.” What, do people stop breathing during all this? Finally, she took a break. Said something about letting my blood pressure come down. I think she was tired of looking at the tears streaming down my face and hearing my shrieks of pain.

When she came back, she worked a little longer on trying to get “one more piece” out. But when I still struggled to relax, she gave up. Said we’d have to wait til next week. That perhaps a week on another antibiotic would allow for the infection to heal and me to be more ready.

28 hours later, I am feeling better. Actually, I’ve felt pretty good all afternoon. This morning, I slept. I thought I would read but, instead, I slept. Guess when that medicine says it might make you sleepy, I should have believed it.

I’m thinking there’s probably all sorts of life lessons in this experience, especially as related to how painful it can be to get a spiritual infection out of one’s life. How we think that once we say we want it gone that, with anesthesia of some divine sort, it will go away painfree. But it doesn’t. Infection fights back. It’s been in charge and wants to stay in charge. I know relief is ahead, even without pain meds, but I will have a hard time forgetting yesterday. And maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe I’ll do whatever it takes on my part not to be in that chair for that reason again. Maybe I’ll learn one of the lessons I was intended to learn through all this. We’ll see . . . when it shows up on a test in the future!