Pain Free
The pain in my jaw had reached that tipping point. Could I suffer through it, or would I have to jump in front of the first bus? The last three dayshad beenunpleasant , but for some reason, as I walked to the dentist’s office, the throbbing that had been a discordant cymbal player morphed into a Mephistopholean version of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.
I thought about my friend, Sharon, who developed RSD (Reflexive Sympathetic Dystrophy) after she separated her shoulder. My short, butchered form of this syndrome is that once the pain pathways have been established, the brain lays pavement for a superhighway. The initial injury heals, the pains remains, and as a free add-on, it gets worse. Now we have tandem tractor trailers rumbling up and down the Autobahn. In Sharon’s case, after failing to get relief from every pain pill on the planet, her inventive physician implanted a morphine pump which injects directly into her brain. The trucks now have softer tires.
I thought about Sharon, because I couldn’t think about anything else. When I approached Dr. Wang’s receptionist, she looked up at me and asked, “Are you okay?” I wanted to ask her, “Do you drive a bus?†But then I realized she wasn’t asking about the tears on my cheeks, but about the blood on my forehead.
Earlier in the day I’d stacked new wood on the railings of my neighbor’s porch, which I had been hired to rebuild. As I stood in the yard, the pointy ends of those boards happened to be slightly lower than my forehead. Every time I looked down to pull a nail from my tool belt, or bent over to retrieve a dropped tool, I’d bonk the board. The first whack, cushioned by my glasses, produced a single drop of blood between my eyes. The second raised an ostrich-sized egg way up on what my brother, Peter, refers to as the living version of Half Dome. The third whack, a direct hit on the ostrich egg, struck oil.
“You mean my forehead? It’s nothing.” I said.
She handed me the requisite forms to fill out.
“But you have blood all over you.”
I had some blood, but it was not all over. Mostly on my sleeves, which served as emergency gauze pads. I wanted to engage this trim, sparkly blue-eyed, raven-haired receptionist in conversation, but I could only clench my teeth.
After I’d scrawled through my health history, Dr. Wang ushered me into his office. I gingerly leaned back on his vinyl chair, and then a very strange thing happened. The pain disappeared. So completely I couldn’t identify the offending tooth. Nor could Dr. Wang, but boy, did he try.
He tapped each tooth with the heavy metal handle of a dental probe. He began with my first upper canine and worked back. Clang. Nothing. Clang, nothing. Clang, still nothing.
“Is it heat sensitive?” He asked.
“I can’t even breathe in without pain.”
He yanked his air gun from its cradle and hosed down the upper right side of my mouth. Nothing. He reached behind where I couldn’t see and returned with an instrument he dipped in ice, and then placed on each tooth. Still nothing. Finally he applied a similar probe, but this one with a red hot end. I could hear sizzling as moisture evaporated from the enamel, but I felt no pain. I thought about Dustin Hoffman in the movie Marathon Man.
Dr Wang smiled; not a malicious Zell-like smile, but a caring, curious one. “This is like going to the doctor and having your symptoms disappear.” Take out the “like,†I thought, this is the real thing.
“I took Nuprin before I left. Do you suppose that’s the problem?”
“It could be. Is that Ibuprofen?”
I still had the bottle. I reached in my pocket, past my keys, assorted nails and loose change,and I pulled it out. There on the label it said – Ibuprofen.
“I guess the anti-inflammatory did its thing. I’d been taking aspirin without much relief, but I talked to another dentist today and she said to take Advil, so I switched.”
Frustrated, Dr. Wang held up the new x-rays and explained which tooth he speculated needed the root canal. The one capped by silver.
“I could do a root canal on this one, or you could come back tomorrow when you’re certain which tooth hurts.”
I opted for door number two.
**********************
Next week: That Filing Feeling
I saw that third eye on Michael’s forehead and it ain’t pretty. You didn’t tell me you banged into the wood three times. Once not enough? As for the mysterious tooth pain, it’s such a nuisance when they can’t determine which tooth it is…sometimes they say it’s referred pain from another tooth in the mouth. Odd how the pain disappeared when you sat in the chair. Marathon Man indeed.
Comment by chris — April 26, 2005 @ 8:20 am
Ain’t it ever the way … ? I’m thinking sly, traitor frontal lobes, which, having thought through the next hour or so in Dr. Wang’s chair, had decided in a cowardice-being-the-better-part-of-valor coup d’etat kinda way, to forcefully silence the synaptic squealers and play dumb, live to wince another day.
I don’t know if I’m looking forward to what I imagine to be a more gruesome sequel or not (from Mike’s comment on April Come What May — “I believe sitting back and experiencing these wires shoved up the canals of my tooth is going to be less painful than continuing to read this pedantic, obsessive drivel.”), but this is a well-told tale. And even without the Marathon Man reference, almost all of us would’ve gone there anyway. I know I had…… BYOCO (bring your own clove oil).
The only comfort is knowing this is in the past for you (I think). The sequel hinges not on unknowable (and thus scarier) events — we know you lived, anyway…
Comment by overSzellous — April 26, 2005 @ 11:59 am
I laughed all the way through. What is it about the suffering of a sibling that can provoke such glee? I guess, better him, than me.
On the other hand, “three” bonks? I would suspect that the primate brain was gone, that the mammalian was also gone. Even reptiles and birds couldn’t claim that prize.
It’s not about who’s on first and what’s on second. But, who, or what, is left?
I liked the “emergency guaze” pads especially.
The really precious thing about Mike’s writing for me is, after decades of looking into those opaque pupils, and living with varying degrees of paranoia about the activity behind them, the suspense now breaks into comedy on some days, a cathedral of light on others, and into the seasons of a Commons that we all can share.
One tooth down. How many to go?
Comment by pohaku — April 26, 2005 @ 1:56 pm
I know what it’s like to bonk that board, over and over again. In our old kitchen, cupboards overhung the counter peninsula, and every single time I did some cutting or chopping below that cupboard, I’d bonk my head on the cupboard. It got so that I’d flinch whenever I came near that peninsula, even to open the cabinets. Finally, we decided to redecorate the kitchen, and I laid down rule #1: the bonking cupboards would go forever. Now that they are gone, I still reflexively avoid them, but as time passed my forehead is healed, and I no longer look like Gorby.
Mike’s pain disappearing at the dentist reminds me of Beth’s old Saturn starter problem. Whenever we’d take it into the Saturn people, the problem would go away. Do cars have a subconscious fear of mechanics?
Comment by rakkity — April 26, 2005 @ 4:43 pm
The April issue of Vanity Fair, in the Short Takes column, alluded to some mighty funny stories coming from that kitchen remodel. Are there any that you care to share?
And pohaku, someday I might just get tired of making fun of myself and set my opaque sights on you!
Comment by michael — April 26, 2005 @ 8:44 pm
One more thing. I searched long and hard for a metaphor for my tooth ache. I played with the Moody Blues turning into Iron Butterfly playing In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. But I waffled not knowing how many people were familiar with either group. I was trying hard to convey the ebb and flow of pain; like little crescendos followed by one big one. When I finally wrote the Rite of Spring thing, I asked Diane if it worked. She wasnÃt sure. I should have asked myself, I would have said, ì I have no idea what you are talking about.î
And then there is the Marathon Man thing. Am I the only one who remembers Laurence Olivier as the evil dentist, Zell, who, using his hidden knife, slits the throat of a bystander after he is identified by a death camp survivor? Should metaphors not refer to popular culture?
Comment by michael — April 26, 2005 @ 9:04 pm
I know Chris and I got the Marathon Man bit (overSzellous and BYOCO weren’t homage enough for you?), but I suspect all did. Stravinsky was a reach, at least for me — for some reason my brain was playing Ravel’s Bolero, whose incessance made painful sense for me, so I went with it. The melody ( ? ) of Rite of Spring just wouldn’t come.
You could’ve bailed on classical and gone with Jethro Tull’s Aqualung, or Locomotive Breath…..
Comment by adam — April 26, 2005 @ 10:14 pm
All your references (yes, every single one) were beyond me, but it was a gripping story anyway.
I keep thinking that it had something to do with leaning back. Or with how much your third eye was planning to start hurting once the tooth-pain diminished.
On another subject: who knew that you CAN have a month-old dead body at a funeral? Who else thinks cremation is less obscene? (Is this a cultural thing? Quaker vs. Catholic?)
Comment by jennifer — April 26, 2005 @ 11:04 pm
By the end of the first three pain-ting paragraphs I was squirming — and when I realized it was real , recent , and first-person , my mind went to, “and how could he have been blogging through these last few days like normal, as though nothing was wrong”?
I do remember the Marathon Man dentist, but would never have remembered the name of the movie.
Comment by smiling — April 26, 2005 @ 11:25 pm
Yeah, that’s what I thought too. Mike sent me a couple of email messages that must have been during that period of pain, and I did think they were a little telegraphic. But to be able to write at all when in pain or with a hangover or even just when out-of-sorts boggles my mind. For Mike, writing must be like breathing.
Comment by rakkityawed@the.effort — April 27, 2005 @ 12:15 pm