Root canal; the pain, blood, sweat and the cursing.

“Give me more pain killer,” was all I begged when the dentist started poking and drilling my tooth with torturous broach files of various size. Blood and tears got mingled in my throat. The only relief I found on that sacrificial chair were the short moments when I am required to wash and rinse my blood filled mouth. That was how modern dental technology waterboarded me for being careless about my teeth, which I often used to pop open beer and soft drink caps. Damn me, pulp tissues inside my tooth got stoned and rotten because of a small crack that cracked away years ago from my central incisor. I must have looked like a toothless mouse to my friends and the dentist with all the outer layer drilled away from that rotten tooth. To add more insult to my trampled spirit, I am now advised not to bite even apples with that capped shiny tooth.

Thank God, I now have a capped tooth that look much shinier than my other stained teeth to remind me of the pain, tears, blood and cursing session I went through. Darn that dentist, the canine tooth seems to have got infected for being over-drilled to fit in the duplicate one. I have not slept well for more than three days with excruciating pain visiting me every night. I am bribing my brain to ignore the pain by feeding painkiller. I really have to see a dentist again as I still have the desire to live. If only dentists know that the treatment is unbearably painful, they had be more generous in stuffing their patients with stronger painkillers. Root canal-ing is no joke. Jaws become heavier, the head becomes bigger, eyes start seeing the naked beauty of hell. All through the sessions, I at least have my fiancé by my side who really knew I was swimming in a flaming ocean.

The couple of rum pegs I sipped every-time before visiting the dentist didn’t help a pinch in reducing the strangest pain of root canalling. It took three sessions to completely remove the infected pulp tissues. I rose from death three times, a record that beats even the miracle of Lazarus.

Apart from learning about pain, tears and blood, I also came to know how a simple smile could make mountain of a difference. In all the sessions, I didn’t see the dentist smile even once. Maybe he was trying to make himself look super professional. Maybe, he smiled behind the mask which doesn’t have the energy to reach the eyes or the face. Long after the whole operation was over, I ponder on all that have past and fancied that a simple smile on the face of that dentist could possibly have reduced my pain a little bit if not halved. I now believe that life is just a lifeless statue without smiles and laughter all around. If I were a politician, my manifesto would be something like “let us all smile like we are crazy and laugh like we are stoned.”

Well, no more root canals for eternity sake and I would have no reason to smile or laugh on the mention of that strange word, ‘root canal.’ Let us banish the word from the dictionary of laughter….