Do you realize that most toothaches you and I have in our lifetime, would have resulted in our deaths in the middle ages? An abscess, a tooth infection would have killed you. There were no antibiotics to fight infections, which would have traveled through your bloodstream and signaled your demise; no antiseptic treatments for extractions or root canalling.
I wish to declare right here and now, that I single-handedly hold the record and win the prize for possessing The Worst Dental Story Ever Told; the dental story from hell. I defy anyone to claim otherwise. When I was thirteen years old and in the 8th grade, I reaped the consequences of having sometime in my past sustained a blunt trauma to an upper front tooth. No one can know what this was. The effects of trauma to the teeth can rear their ugly heads years later. I suspect it can be traced back to the time my brother opened a door into my face. The immediate results were two black eyes, the latent results probably the abscess in my front tooth. The abscess could also have been caused by a line drive that my glove missed while playing co-ed neighborhood baseball with enough kids to actually form two teams, each with a “bench.” My fielding skills improved enough so that eventually I would become the first-string third baseman (that’s right, the “hot corner”) for a New England championship CYO team, but when I was 10, or 11 those skills had not yet been perfected.
As a result of the abscess, I found myself in the office of Dr. Fogarty, my childhood dentist. The infection was so advanced and my mouth so swollen, Dr. Fogarty decided that to administer a Novocain shot to my mouth would risk sending the infection into my bloodstream, a possibility far more dangerous than the initial infection. So, on that afternoon I sat in the dental chair. My mother was asked to sit in a chair beside me. Dr. Fogarty proceeded to perform maxio-facial surgery and a root canal without benefit of any anesthesia. Let me make this clear. Dr. Fogarty took a scalpel to my upper gum, to relieve the infectious matter. He cut a one and a half inch incision and then performed a root canal on the underside without giving me any anesthesia. I think my mother cried more than I. Oh, don’t get me wrong, my tears flowed in an endless stream, but I didn’t move. Not a muscle. I didn’t flinch or cry out or scream for it to stop. I grasped the arms of my chair until my knuckles turned white and I exhibited the courage of Joan of Arc. And I don’t care how boastful that sounds. To have endured that procedure the way that I did at 13 was a mark of tremendous courage. One would think that after this experience I would possess such a fear of dentists that I would never darken their doors again. Just the opposite is true. There is nothing any dentist could ever do to me again that could equal what I experienced that afternoon. At birth my first child weighed just one ounce shy of nine pounds. If someone said to me tomorrow that I have to make a choice; have a nine pound baby or two or three, OR repeat the dental procedure I had when I was 13, I’d say, “Get me to the delivery room.”
Whenever I had a cavity there would be no Novocain. The dentist drilled and filled without it and I thought it normal. When Dr. Fogarty retired and in my twenties I went to a new dentist, Dr. Sadwin, at the first hint of a cavity he was ready to administer a shot when I said, “I don’t need that.” As I recall he said, “What? Are you crazy?” I told him I just never had it before. I don’t know if dentists take the Hippocratic Oath but he refused to treat me without the shot. He took very seriously the vow to “do no harm.” I thought Novocain a beautiful thing.
Just a few years ago I went to a dentist here in Charleston who recommended root planing, a procedure that entails cleaning the teeth at the root, below the gum line. I was told that we could try it without Novocain but some patients experience “discomfort.” I didn’t think it hurt at all. At one point the dentist walked into my room (the hygienist does the procedure) and said, “So, how is my masochistic patient?” I don’t consider myself to be masochistic. I simply have such a high tolerance for dental pain that what would cause others to be raised three feet off their chairs has no effect on me.
This weekend I had a toothache. Before I started to drink my coffee through a straw, some of the hot liquid struck one of the affected teeth at which point I really did rise three feet off my chair. The pain was so intense I couldn’t even determine which tooth was the culprit. The whole area hurt. I went to my dentist yesterday and the x-rays showed “nothing.” He referred me to an endodontist, a root canal specialist with whom I had an appointment today. I am amazed at the specialization that has occurred recently in the area of dental care. One must go to one doctor for a filling, to another for a root canal, another for an extraction and yet another for implants. My new endodontist discovered that I did not require a root canal. I needed two. We did one this afternoon and will do the other tomorrow.
Does anyone know who discovered or invented Novocain?
Because today, I’d like to lay some flowers at the grave.
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