So That Happened*

What happened?  You ask.  Sadly, my answer is:  Jehanne's First Root Canal.  Hooray!

Throughout the hurricane, I felt twinges in one of my back teeth.  Cold, sweet, pressure--all of it made me wince.  Uh oh, I thought.  Only seven weeks ago, this tooth's old filling was drilled and replaced.  At the time, my dentist told me, "This one is so close to the nerve you may need a root canal."  I was so depressed after my session in the dentist's chair I went shopping and bought myself something pretty.   And now, seven weeks later, I've left the office of my brand-new endodontist with instructions (1) to rinse my mouth with saltwater every few hours, (2) to avoid chewing pretty much anything other than pudding, and (3) to swallow my horsepills of ibuprofen every six hours.

The novocaine is wearing off.  When I first began to feel the left side of my face again, an electric slice of pain zig-zagged from my tooth to my cheek.  The pain was so sharp and clear, I could visualize the nerve endings inside of me.  I waited about hour, the way we wait for a storm after spotting that first sliver of lightning in the distance.  The pain hasn't returned with quite the same electricity.  But, I have a Part Two to my root canal scheduled for late next week, which means a guarantee of more pain to come.

"Life is pain, princess," says Cary Elwes in The Princess Bride.  He's speaking existentially.  But it's certainly true that physical pain is something we can all count on as well.  

This has been the summer of teeth for me.  I've been trying to remember if there are any really good poems about teeth.  Somehow, I keep thinking that the right piece of incisive (haha) poetry could make me feel better about all the drilling and stabbing and x-raying and filling.  Freud tells us that, in dreams, a lost tooth signifies emasculation, castration.  But what do poems tell us?

*A line from one of my favorite movies, "State and Main," by David Mamet.  Alec Baldwin says it right after he leaves the car he has just totaled, an underage girl in the passenger seat beside him.