Tell the tooth

Today is Wednesday, meaning that tomorrow is Thursday.  Thursday is usually a pretty good day here in RetirementLand, but tomorrow is a special kind of Thursday.

Tomorrow is Root Canal day for me.

A root canal is a process for extracting maximum pain out of the dentally challenged.  The term comes from the old song "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" with its refrain "...for it's ROOT! ROOT! ROOT! canals for the home team..." indicating that chewing on the upper right side had been a tough experience for an entire ball club.

The "canal" part of the term also refers to the large body of water known as the "Erie Canal," because from what everyone is telling me, this will be an eerie experience.

As I'm understanding it, first step will be to knock me out with the same tranquilizers that Arapaho tribes use to knock out the Great White Buffalo.  And that's just for my head and neck; the rest of me will be free to flail and flinch in the manner of James Cagney being led to the electric chair in "Angels With Dirty Faces."  My mouth will be open wider than the entrance to the Harbor Tunnel and filled with suction equipment, drills and fingers, but the rest of me will be doing the Funky Chicken.

Once I am under, a specially-trained SWAT team will be brought in to keep me nice and still for the procedure.  The leader of the SWAT team, Cpl. Punishment, will say, "Now we can do this the easy way or the hard way..."  I will, of course, choose the hard way. But once they have me hogtied and too tired to wriggle anymore, the process can begin.

A little bit of heaven

The process itself, so they say, involves drilling a 3/4" hole into a tooth that has already been crowned (and I didn't even know we were playing checkers!) and the drill bit, pictured at right, will go 7 inches into my head, coming to a stop just before reaching my medulla oblongata.  Then a rubber stopper will be inserted into the hole.  I understand that discarded traffic cones are used in this step.

AAAAAAAAAAAAH!

And then, in just under 14 hours, the whole process will be over, and I will be discharged, a free man once again.  Staggering crazily across the parking lot, I will somehow get into my ride, and head for one of the numerous back alleys in Lutherville where OraJel is for sale, no questions asked.


And then I will stop for a bagel and a coffee.  Note to self: wear a coffee-colored polo shirt tomorrow!