In my over 300 blog entries about life in Jordan, have I talked about going to the dentist much? I might have mentioned it, because it always made me chuckle, but in my twice-yearly visits to the dentist in Amman, I always thought it odd that he didn’t take x-rays. The first time I went to the dentist here I actually asked toward the end of the very quick cleaning. “Don’t you take x-rays,” I inquired innocently but directly. “Oh, no, Mr. John, your teeth are good!”
That reaction and observation actually reveals a great deal. But anyway, I always found it a little comical that you had to have bad teeth, or at least noticeably bad teeth, to warrant the taking of x-rays.
In January, 2012, I started to have some shooting pains in a tooth (I had just been for one of my cleanings the month before) so I went back to the dentist. I am not a dentist, mind you, but I figured I had a cavity. So the way my trained dentist figured out which tooth it might be—why we couldn’t take an x-ray did seem a mystery again—he had an instrument that shot air and he used it against the teeth on my upper left side until I jumped from the pain. (I half-expected him to yell, “Found it!”) So we did the filling and that was that. I said good-bye to the jovial dentist. Have I mentioned he wears a biker jacket? I am not judging, just filling in the landscape for you. Have I mentioned he looks the age of our seniors? Probably a child prodigy.
Anyway, when I came home from the trip to Belgium in March, the shooting pains returned and the tooth aches intensified. I started chocking ibuprofen like I would love to eat Reece’s pieces. If you have ever had tooth pains, do you remember how difficult it is to sleep? During the day it is a little easier to manage except—wow, the shooting pains again!!—but the nights are hard. Shooting pains are hard to overlook when trying to fall asleep. One night I almost called Julianne here and asked her to come and have my teeth all ripped out.
I mentioned the problem in the history department office and two colleagues immediately suggest their dentist, the same man, assuring me he is great. “Does he take-x-rays” I inquired innocently but directly. That is my new criterion for greatness in dentists. “Of course,” they answered, “Dr. Sami really is great.”
Later that day I called Dr. Sami and got someone whose English is as strong as my Arabic. She had difficulty with the phone number, getting it so very close so he could call me back, but not quite getting it accurately. Finally she said, “Oh, you have more than one number?” I sighed, and hoped he might try one of the combinations she wrote down. In a few hours I got a call from Dr. Sami. I told him about the pain—very hard to describe the quality and intensity of pain, I guess a little like trying to describe your “heat” spice level you want in an Indian restaurant—and he asked if I could wait until Sunday when he had an opening. I asked if Saturday might work. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could be poppin’ pills to try and curb the pain.
Of course finding his office was a struggle. We don’t really do street names in Jordan, and so you say things like, “His office is in Sweifieh, but not on the main walking street, and kind of near the Papa John’s pizza place.” Uh-huh. Could we have a number? How near Papa John’s??? Is there a sign? One colleague drew a map for me. When I got there, the map wasn’t perfectly accurate…I called the other colleague at home and asked if she could guide me to the office. “I was told it was in an office building with glass.” There were several of those. Finally, I got there. The street address is #23 though, in case you want to find Dr. Sami. His sign is in Arabic but does have the English word “California.” I don’t know the street name however, but it’s only about a 4 minute walk to Papa John’s.
Dr. Sami is so nice! And so interested in explaining everything. He takes x-rays. As he looks at the x-rays he actually utters an “Uh, oh.” In what context in any doctor’s office might that be a hoped-for response??? So he says there is a problem with the tooth that was filled in January. He says he wants to drill. He then gets out a little white board—honest—and draws for me what he wants to do. He says, “I want to drill without numbing you because I need to check on the nerves. I think there might be some nerve damage.” I said, “I know I just met you, and my colleagues like you, but doesn’t that sound like torture?” He said he had lived and worked in California and liked Americans’ humor.
So I grab the sides of the dentist chair and he begins to drill. He is very kind, asks if it hurts. Hmmm…no, it doesn’t hurt. After he drills some more I find I haven’t winced once. He asks if it hurt. No, I said. He explained that he hoped it had hurt a little. He worried about the damage and worried that the nerves for that tooth might be dead. He then said, “Mr. John, can you take bad news?”
We retired to his office and he got out a chart, his white board, the x-rays and a pad of paper. He explained that he wanted to see if the nerves were still sensitive enough, and they did not seem to be. Moreover, he spied a crack in the tooth, and he said it was a crack that went down to the base of the tooth. Had I done something to cause that? I had no idea. He used the white board to draw pictures, and then he showed me the x-rays—I mean he wanted me to see and understand everything and get a sense of the scenario. He then worried that the tooth might have to be extracted. He looked so pained to have to tell me this. Extracted. Then he got out the pad of paper to explain the alternatives one might choose in dealing with the extraction. He even explained, and then drew it out, why I had had pain. It wasn’t a cavity, although he said it wasn’t filled expertly, but he said bacteria had probably settled into the crack and caused the pain.
He really couldn’t have been nicer, or a more detailed explainer of everything! He called a colleague of his, an endodontist, and suggested I go to him for him to take better x-rays and see if possibly I might be able to have a root canal. The root canal became the best-case scenario!
A different colleague drew me a map to his office (at the third light make a left and then go across from the hospital and find the flower shop that sells cards and balloons—it in that building) and this map proved more successful for me. I meet him, we take pictures, we schedule the root canal (Dr. Sami even calls me to see how that appointment went! He also burst my bubbled by saying, “He may find in the middle of the root canal that we can’t save the tooth. Sorry.”)
Let’s make this long story short—the root canal went fine. There was no pain, but of course the sounds are unbelievably harsh—what are they doing in your mouth anyways?? It went fine, I went back to Dr. Sami, and I have been twice more. We have taken care of the less-skillful dentistry of the last couple of years. Now, these doctors aren’t on the insurance plan. For those of you who know me well, yes, I can be frugal, and even a cheapskate. But I decided you don’t fool with this. The crown I got was top-of-the-line (Dr. Sami had written out all the options, drawn pictures about how each option would affect the tooth) and no it wasn’t covered by insurance. But the cost of all this was probably a third of the cost in the USA.
Anyway, the saga of the teeth really ended last week. I had a filling taken care of and Dr. Sami, my BFF, bid me adieu.
But this morning I thought about this whole story, the nerves, the anxiety, the wondering when and how it might play out…strangely I thought about this as my art historian warriors went into battle for their AP test.
As I wrote the other day, I love this time of year. I love preparing them for battle, I love showing them the clip of Henry V and the St. Crispian’s Day speech to galvanize them for this battle (I have been showing that since 1993 to AP classes the night before!) and then we go outside and have a water-gun fight and release a little of the tension.
What my students do, or really any students, on an AP test, astounds me. The tests are hard. It takes nerves to withstand these tests. They cover an entire subject, be it Art History or European History or Biology—and many, many more. You could fold, crumble, dissolve, et cetera.
But my students muster their courage, manage their nerves and go and sit for a test that today asked them to navigate through 5,000 years of visual arts, politics, philosophy, religion, sociology, architecture, and personal crises. And they come out smiling.
As they went in to sit for the exam, we could probably have drilled and they wouldn’t have felt a thing—not that their nerves are dead—no, they are so excited about the prospect of celebrating their knowledge.
It is a wondrous thing every year to watch their display of nerve.
No comments:
Post a Comment