Since I was a kid, I heard about the horrors of getting a root canal. People said they were extremely painful and the procedure was very unpleasant.

I got to dodge this experience until February 2010. That's when I got the bad news that I needed my first root canal. I wasn't sure what to expect. I knew it would be expensive, but I knew I could afford it just fine, so I wasn't that bothered by that aspect. But was the procedure itself going to be horrible?

At the time, Benjamin didn't exist yet. I was with his soon-to-be-mom, but we hadn't conceived him yet, and we didn't live together (or close to each other -- recall I lived in Vegas!)

Strangely enough, it is likely that Benjamin was conceived on the day before my first root canal. I left town to get it done, and didn't see her again for about a week. The timing of everything makes it very likely that Benjamin wouldn't exist had I needed the root canal just one day earlier.

But back to the procedure itself. I had told my dentist I wanted it done at an endodontist because they specialize in root canals. He obliged and referred me to one.

I got there, they laid me almost flat on the dental chair, and they put this obnoxious thing over my mouth:






No fucking way was I wearing that thing. Felt like I was being suffocated. Yes, that's actually rubber, and you cannot breathe through it. I told the endodontist that I wouldn't be able to do this. Keep in mind this was 8.5 years before the severe anxiety problems which hit me in August 2018. He insisted that the dental dam was a mandatory piece of safety equipment, which had to be there.

I asked, "Well, does it need to cover my whole mouth? Can you cut the half which is on the side of my mouth you're not working on?"

Surprisingly, nobody had requested him to do that before. He acknowledged that others had a problem with the dental dam, but those people were told to either deal with it, have the tooth extracted, or get the procedure done while put under. They hadn't considered cutting half of it.

He paused to consider it, and agreed to cut it. I also told him I hate being all the way on my back during dental work, so he agreed to lean me up more.

Apparently I also had some (harmless) genetic abnormality which caused a tooth which normally had 2 roots to have 3. He said this was the first time he had ever seen it, and actually sent a "thank you" note to my dentist, because it was "cool" to be able to work on such an unusual tooth. LOL!

I didn't love the procedure, but there were at least a few pleasant surprises:

1) The procedure itself didn't hurt or bother me any more than getting a cavity filled, aside from taking longer. I was sure it would be awful, but it wasn't.

2) The only bothersome thing was the dental dam, which I still didn't like even with half of it cut (though the half cut was a HUGE difference).

3) There wasn't a tremendous amount of pain afterwards. Just some soreness which was completely gone within 48 hours.


After the crown, the Jew wallet was close to $2500 lighter, but I was owning heads in limit holdem online at time, so I just chalked it up to taking a bad beat on a $2500 pot (which happened all the time), and didn't let that part get to me.



Fast forward almost 5 years to December 2014.

A filling fell out of one of my teeth. I went to a new local dentist by me, expecting him to simply refill the tooth, and that would be that. Nope! Turned out the filling fell out because decay developed under the filling, and the pain I was feeling was due to the decay hitting the nerve, not the hole in my tooth. Ugh. Root canal time again.

I went to a different and closer endodontist this time. I negotiated up front that they would commit to cutting half the dental dam. After some initial balking, they reluctantly agreed.

I went there, and loaded up some music on my phone to listen to as a distraction. Then I got there and realized that I forgot my headphones. I asked if they had headphones, and they did, but they didn't fit the iPhone. They had some headphones for some weird iPod-like devices they gave to people there, which were preloaded with a very small selection of music. I took one of them, scrolled through the choices, and picked Toby Keith. This time the dental dam was even more bothersome than the previous time, and I wasn't sure I would be able to get through it. However, I just closed by eyes, listened to the music, and Toby got me through it. Again, the procedure itself wasn't a big deal aside from that stupid dental dam.

Continued next post...