Root Canal

by Phil Johnson



his morning epitomized my whole week. I had an emergency root canal.

The dentist who worked on me is a root-canal specialist who only works alternate Wednesdays and Mondays. He told me it was "lucky" I got in today, because the tooth had a very long, narrow, and partly calcified nerve sheath (he surely meant before the procedure; not after), so it was an extremely difficult procedure, and he was pretty sure my regular dentist would have had a hard time completing it.

Then he grinned at me and looked for all the world like that Nazi dentist in The Marathon Man.

Root canals sound a lot worse than they really are. They are more tedious than truly painful. There are lots more painful dental procedures. I once had two root canals in one appointment, and I think I've had five (averaging one per decade) in my lifetime. What really hurts is the bill for the crown you have to get afterward.

But the root canal itself can actually be something of a relief. It destroys the nerve, so that classic, bone-jarring toothache pain is suddenly gone. (Your whole face will ache for days from having your jaw jacked open for two hours, but that's not as bad as the toothache that made the root canal necessary in the first place. Seriously. Trust me.)

Anyway, after the root canal, whilst standing at the receptionist's desk trying to book a follow-up appointment, I realized my phone wasn't properly syncing my appointments and contacts list. I knew I had an appointment I needed to get to the office for, and a couple of impromptu meetings before that. But I also had to get the phone syncing properly today, because Friday I'm leaving for my annual stint teaching systematic theology in Sicily (8 hours a day for five days straight), and the phone will be my lifeline.

Thanks to Bill Fickett, who spent a couple of hours working on the syncing problems and finally had to make a trip to the phone store to get my SIM card replaced, the phone is now working again. But by the time I got away from the office this afternoon I had accomplished very little else.

And I have an important writing deadline to meet before I can leave for Italy.

And tonight my jaw really aches from this morning's root canal.



That's why this is will be last blogpost for the week. I'm writing mainly to put Dan and Frank on notice that they will be responsible for this weekend's Dose o' Spurgeon®—and to ask everyone to behave for the next few days. I'll prolly check in from Sicily a time or two next week. See you from there.

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