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Pain
Monday, January 18, 1999 I went to sleep early last night (Jack laughed the other day when I described being in bed asleep by midnight as "early") in preparation for my dental appointment this morning. I've had a slight problem recently with turning off the alarm and going back to sleep (a symptom that I'm not going to bed early enough), but today I got out of bed in good time, bathed and dressed, then took the bus downtown to the endodontist's office. The Medical-Dental Building is old enough and tall enough to need two banks of elevators; one goes from the first floor to the tenth floor, and the other bank covers the upper floors. It does get you up there quicker. I wonder how many years of sky scrapers it took to come up with that idea? I read an issue of Martha Stewart's LIVING magazine while we were waiting for the anesthetic injections to take effect. I had to laugh at the spread on a laundry room renovation. Putting a grommetted curtain (specified as being on a hospital track) in front of the washer and dryer seems like a sensible idea. But why a linen curtain? Such elegance in the mudroom seems like overkill. After some difficulty getting the rubber dam clamped around the tooth in question (something unusual about the shape of my jaw, and the tooth, known around that office as #2, is as far back as possible in my mouth), Dr. S--- got down to business. I was instructed to raise my left hand if I felt any pain. I wasn't expecting to, but I did have to make use of this signal several times. This surprised the dentist, and at first she thought we wouldn't be able to finish the procedure today, but she kept dabbing more topical anesthetic into the troublesome root, and injecting more as well. I really didn't know the technical details about root canals before. Did you know? The endodontist takes tiny rasps and files and empties out each root of the problem tooth. Then the entire tooth is filled with gutta-percha, a good old fashioned term. That's what they used to make golf balls out of! Dr. S--- was surprised by how much gutta-percha was being used to fill my tooth. Then she realized that since the original cavity in the tooth was on the side, the filling material was gooshing out there as she packed it down from the top! The entire root canal experience was more tiring than I thought it would be. I'd hoped to go into work afterwards, but instead I wimped out, went back home, and slept for most of the afternoon.
The author of Touch the World (who now chooses to be called "Absalom" in this connection) referred to Jack as my "paramour." But this word apparently has connotations of an adulterous relationship, according to Microsoft Bookshelf. So I don't think that's quite the right term.
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