There are plain dentists, and then there are super-dentists. I spent two hours in the treatment of a super-dentist today, hopefully the final of my recent three visits. This guy spends his days peering into patients gaping maws after fastening some sort of thin, rubbery prophylactic device that attaches inside one’s mouth and surrounds it.
Then he does root canals. That’s all he does. He is an endodontist.
I was first referred to him by the dentist who took over the practice of the incompetent dentist who so botched up two root canals on me that they had to be re-done. “I don’t do re-dos,” he said flatly.
All told I had the two botched root canals re-done, plus another one done from scratch. I learned that some teeth have more than just one canal. The latter had four! I had been in his chair for three hours the time before last, my mouth propped open the whole time with his rubbery mouth thing, gurgling and wincing and wishing I was in Philadelphia. Afterward, my jaw hurt for four days and the right side (the two aforesaid re-dos) swelled up like Marlon Brando.
Today wasn’t as bad; it took two hours to finish up all three jobs. The whole time I was in the chair, endoman and his female assistant kept up a running repartee, at times witty, at times inane. On occasion he would attempt to include me in their conversation, so as not to be rude. “How do you feel about that, Steve?”
“Umpph, rrrurh, mmutht,” I’d respond. He always seemed to understand me, as if listening to patients trying to talk with their mouths numbed and propped open was a foreign language that he’d finally mastered, even without Rosetta Stone.
“What kind of boots are those?” he asked me at one point.
“Mummph,” I told him.
“Oh, I have a pair of those too,” he said happily, reaching for his drill.