What I learned from my triple-failed root canal.
I would have rather been in a thousand other places than in the dimly lit, empty mall, late on Sunday night, getting a root canal; but, that is exactly where I found myself. I also found myself in the Uber ride there, asking the question, “Is getting a root canal really that bad?” as a flood of uses of that old adage swept through my brain; worse than biking through bees? Worse than giving a eulogy? Worse than doing accounting? A shutter, a root canal couldn't possibly be worse than doing anything involving math. I clung to this.
But perhaps the only thing truly worse than a root canal is severe dental pain itself. It is disabling, mind-splitting, and agonizing!
And so, we sat in an Uber on our way to a neighboring town to seek emergency help. Now you may think that this may get graphic, and it may, but more so, stick with me until the end because getting a triple-failed-root-canal this week, in Brazil amidst the pandemic, yes, triple-failed, has left me still eating only liquids and mashed potatoes, but has also brought me a little closer to God, and here’s why. It might surprise you.
After being in quarantine for so long in Brazil, first, in our small one-room apartment nestled in the heart of a favela, and now in a smaller farming community, we have found it difficult to locate a place to buy a blanket let alone a dentist. So, finding the emergency 24-hour dental clinic was like the messiah coming down himself and offering in blessing for this procedure in person. I had been experiencing dental discomfort for a week. Yeah way to really jump on that, sigh! Then, beginning Friday night it started to intensify, and by Sunday was like an alarm system going off in my brain sending its vibrating signals deep into all the crevices where nerve tendrils can dig.
In the time it took us to get ourselves ready, Fabian shared some illustrious stories of why he had chosen to postpone getting his dentistry done in Brazil. Stories of teeth being pulled, anesthesia not working etc.. The kind of stories you might wait until after the first failed root canal to perhaps disclose to a person. Giant gulp.
Now, not all Brazilian dentistry is scary. Yes, I did Google statistics to try and put my mind at ease, and according to the Financial Times Brazil has a very prestigious dentistry industry. Note to self: keep this article at the front of my brain for the next month, please.
But, last night was not a testament to this supposed truth. Our Uber drove either way too fast, or way too slow up and down the winding roads to the neighboring town. He checked his cell phone continuously as if waiting for a very important text message, or entirely forgetting that he was driving a car. When we got out Fabian discreetly mentioned that he thought the driver was drunk. But the scenery we watched zip past us was fascinating. Generally, on any night of the week, we were in bed by 10 pm, but here, we were traveling through the main road of a small favela outside of Cabo Frio, late at night, and it was jamming. The event? Church.
For 4 months the church-going people of Brazil have been trapped inside very small spaces and in the last month, the churches have reopened. On the one mile stretch of city street, I counted 6 open-air churches, 6! Each similar in style, with the fourth wall open to the street. Each church had white plastic chairs more graciously spaced than normal, a preacher booming at the front, and women and men in their best dresses, collared shirts and masks, bowed in reverence, or hands lifted or singing. It was exciting to see so much God here.
The driver dropped us off in front of a completely closed mall on a shadowy city street. It was my duty to find the shut gate in the dark and hail Fernando. He would be the all-night doorman waiting to let us in. Fernando looked like he might have been out at church himself. He was wearing crisp white pants and a collared shirt with a light windbreaker over it that was the cloth of the Brazilian flag. But like very chic. I really wanted his windbreaker. His hair was still damp from a shower or a lot of gel and his cologne was strong. For someone who sits alone all night long, I was impressed, but also intrigued. What does he do all night in an empty mall by himself looking like he may go out clubbing? Entertaining possibilities of Fernando’s nightlife was a welcome distraction.
We navigated ourselves through the empty mall, up two flights of stairs, until at the very end of a long hallway was a lit sign “Idonova”; rays of heaven’s gilded light illuminated it, and a harp strum, I’m sure. The clinic itself was very clean. The tv was broken and flickered grey, mildly giving me a panic attack, but there were three dental awards hanging on the wall, so my quick mental math over the legitimacy of the person who was going to drill into my head checked out. It had to at this point.
When the dentist gave me the first round of anesthesia I was surprised that it only went in on one side of the gum. To say I was nervous was an understatement. I had always been a relatively “ok dentist person” until a couple of months back when I had a crown replaced in Vidigal. The dentist began operating without anesthesia and told me that if I felt anything to raise my hand. When the shooting pain of her drill nicked the inside of my tooth, I jolted both my hands up hitting the dentist and the hygienist in the faces. The little tool that the hygienist was using sprayed water everywhere as it flew out of her hands. I was both very embarrassed and upset. This act turned me into a “not ok dentist person”, I now realized.
So there I was, bracing as if contracting all my muscles would make me numb somehow. My breaths were shallow, and palms sweaty as they clutched my iPhone that I tuned into a podcast to drain out any excess fear noise. I soon realized that trying to listen to a podcast detailing the difficult and controversial history of birth control was not soothing, at all.
The dentist began with the drill and the pick, my eyes tightly fastened shut like two clothes pins, but, and yes a big but, after a good 2 minutes a surge of pain entered my blood flow. Pick PICK PICK. Fuck. Followed by something about the fact the inventor of birth control was a Jesuit. Think about the Jesuit, I thought! Fuck. PICK. I tried not to punch the dentist so I yelped. Yes, use noise not force I thought. EEEEMmkk. Something like that. But I think she could easily tell by the color in my face draining and flailing feet something was terribly wrong.
I felt what she was doing. All of it. She leaned her body weight against my heaving chest and rubbed my arm like you would comfort a cat. Calma. Tranquilo. She reached for more anesthesia and loaded two more rounds in. I still felt pain.
When she went in for the third round, mid-procedure, my clenched muscles and hyperventilating chest caused the needle to enter the taut muscle which would later cause the cheek to swell up like a golf ball. Perfect for teaching English online in a matter of hours.
She finished by killing off two of the four roots and then sealing the tooth back up explaining that I had a rare calcified root that would need to be extracted in another session. Today would at least alleviate the radiating pain. It left me in shock. I signed the papers, paid, and left with a feeling of defeat, nausea, and tremmoring hands. Knowing that the future of this tooth might be more pain and kicking myself for not just going last week and getting a fucking crown.
I was excited for the Uber ride home. I wanted to see God alive again. I wanted to see people and movement and praising and families. The state of the virus has me both cautious in leaving the house, but also celebrating the site of people out of the house. So far in the city where we live, there have been 260 noted cases of Covid and 4 deaths. Hearing statistics these days is like hearing the weather forecast. It becomes detached from life itself. And more attached to how it will affect your plans. This is scary to me. Not knowing anyone personally who has contracted Covid in Brazil, the US or Argentina has emphasized the detachment. Not something I am proud of or want to hold on and use to steer us into reckless behavior, but it does create a barrier that living on a farm intensifies.
In the last month I also intentionally went off social media. This has felt like both an echo of feeling disconnected and also a welcome void to explore without influence. A decision based on the discernment of next moves. On wanting to hear more here. To think in Portuguese. To practice listening to my partner without zoning out. To think about the future of our cross-continent bike trip and its postponement, about going to Divinity School, and to prevent comparing my path as it unfolds to other people constantly.
I was raised with a value set that praises looking good and keeping your shit together, but this too often can mutate in my brain to not doing the deep internal work necessary to move forward emotionally. That in turn affects every other aspect of my life. And that is all accentuated by abusing social media. Guilty as charged.
Being in quarantine and not doing, doing, doing has given space for just thinking. Maybe too much. Maybe you're feeling that way now? Like someone slammed on the car breaks and everything from the back seat just flew up to the front and smacked against the windshield for you to stare at. And there is a lot to stare at. Why have I waited so long to clean this car?
Living in a Brazilian favela was the most intense thing I have ever done. And it was done at first in tandem with leaving an abusive relationship. Then, feeling whole again. Feeling lost, feeling loved and unloved, and fighting for things I believe in and re-evaluating belief systems. Every day was a continuous thread of mini disasters or surprises or things you could never imagine seeing in person, sewn together then lived out in real time. But the fact that it was a consumable experience for me, that at the end of it all, we packed up our little family and moved out, and that this is not the case for the millions who live there, and for the people, we call family there now, has me evaluating why I was even there to consume it in the first place. If the work and the NGO where I was at was “making a difference”? Or if it was a selfish act of saviorism? How insight gained from these reflections can create a deeper sense of knowing inside me as I leave that experience behind, without ill feelings but with constructive insights into future roles and relationships and humanness.
God reminds me in the void that I didn’t leave that experience. The experience became me.
I do this all while entering a new chapter of my life as a soon to be wife. What a gift to have space to evaluate what that title holds. I do that now while becoming a part of a different country's culture, and marrying into another set of relatives. I do that now while missing my own relatives, Sunday night lasagna dinner, or going out for burritos with my brother. I do this while watching parts of our social system be broken down and then reformed. Part of my old self needing to be entirely abandoned to show up more. Getting a root canal is just one more speed bump. A reminder to slow down. Savor this time when it is totally justifiable to eat ice cream for breakfast and the hours sitting in the sun imagining what kind of mother I want to be.
This is now all being done in the silence of being off social media. And it is clear and opalescent and sounds like the banana trees outside being kissed by gusts of wind. It feels uncomfortable and disconnected at times. But at other times richly connected to the moment as it passes.
As we rode back home we were stopped at the police checkpoint entering Buzios, the town we now call home. In order to enter now during Covid times, you need proof of residency. In our rush, we didn’t take any paperwork proving our address so I fumbled to explain our situation with my swollen mouth. We are totally screwed, I thought. But then, I remembered the letter I had asked the dentist to write to my job explaining that if I needed to cancel class it was because of the tooth. The police officer looked at the letter and both of our ID cards, and let us enter.
That night I was uncomfortable but the radiating pain was gone thank God. There was no Instagram story to create or share to post, so instead, I sat in the discomfort. We watched our current show on Netflix and I took an Ibuprofen although I wanted something stronger. The next day in my recovery meeting someone shared about bringing God into all things. Tough day at the office? Did you bring God there? Doing the dishes? Is God there? I would use this on Wednesday night as we went into a new Odontologists office here in Buzios to get the second round of the root canal done. I would need so much God there.
Instead of listening to a podcast this time, I chose a playlist of mediation music, birds chirping, Tibetan monks Oming, and a slow-moving stream gurgling. So much better. When she administered the anesthesia on all three sides of the tooth into an entirely numbed state, I was relieved. This will be pain-free I thought. I chanted in my head again and again as she re-drilled the tooth open, “God is here, God is here.” It helped.
She re-sealed the tooth and explained to us what the first dentist had explained. The calcified root was rare and would need to be killed off in another session. Yes, yet another session. Why did she even open the tooth this round in the first place?? But in order for the dentist to see exactly how far the root went into my tooth, we would need to go back to the first town and get X-Rays, because apparently this little town that boasts itself on the world stage of international tourist destinations, does not have a dental x-ray machine that provides gum imaging. Once she knew how far the root was in, she could then try to take it out, or something. I was very grateful to have Fabian listening to this whole procedure because his Portuguese trumps mine.
We celebrated another night without pain, and a dentist who knew how to numb a tooth, by going to the nearby supermarket, to buy all things mushy; ice cream, soft white bread, soups, and juices. On the way home I couldn’t tell if the car was making me sick, or if there was something seriously wrong with my mouth. By the time we arrived home my brain was experiencing a type of pain perhaps only comparable to childbirth although I have yet to know what that feels like. This was far beyond the pain from the first night. Far beyond any pain I have ever experienced.
I could not sit, or stand or do whatever, so I paced, back and forth noticing how my fingers were twisting and scratching onto any surface; the hem of my shirt, the edge of my pockets, the surface of the kitchen counter. Fabian became worried as the color again drained from my face. We texted the dentist and she asked us to come back to the clinic. First, she had to run home to breastfeed her baby but she would text us when she was heading back. She said this was not normal. Fantastic.
I sat there wriggling in pain, asking God to come into this moment. I repeated the mantra again and again. God in a little voice reminded me that this pain would not kill me. I thought of the bloody battles on the show Outlander we had watched the night before and played a mental game with myself that although painful, I was not bleeding out, or losing a leg, this was just a root, or some nerve and it was going to be ok. Of all the times in my alcoholic brain that justified drinking, this came in on top. I thought of the antibacterial qualities of vodka and its soothing flow of eliminating everything. Ah you are a smart one alcoholic mind. The warmness when it hits your stomach and the sensations of ease it pumps through your veins blotting out memories, people, and pain. I wanted to drink.
It was 10 pm by that point. We got the text and immediately got back in another Uber. The dentist re-opened the tooth and cleaned out what must have been exposed nerves. Nerves that when all the nicely injected anesthesia wore off they felt the pressure of the dental putty pushed back into the tooth. The dentist as she was inside of my mouth let Fabian see on a little blue dentist napkin the nerves she must have dug out, proof that this was the problem. I had never had a dentist show a loved one a procedure in real-time, and afterward Fabian said he wasn’t really sure he wanted to do it again.
She covered up the tooth and said this should stop the pain, BUT if it happened to come back, send her a message. Every minute that passed after that conversation I clocked, intently monitoring how long it took the first anesthesia to wear off, and how long I had left to go now pain free. We got home and by my estimate, I still had another 45 minutes. I prepared myself for war. I changed into my favorite grey sweats and a comfy oversized t-shirt. I propped my pillow against the wall and nestled into an upright sleeping position taking deep breaths and inviting a little of God into each one, noticing how the air entered into my half numb face, then cascaded deep into my belly.
As the anesthesia began to wear off, the area in my mouth gouged by her pick began to yell. But the screams were not the high pitch blood-curdling wails of a nerve being compressed. They were of a tooth that had been drilled. Thank you God. I fell asleep at 3 am with a black tea bag wedged into the side of my gum because Fabian discovered online that it reduced both the pain and inflammation. Totally worked!
Touching pain illuminated a new level of gratitude within me. I was Mario and had just struck a mushroom brick that gave me wings. I was now flying without the extreme pain. This was God working in my life. 7 am rolled around I had to start teaching. I moved about the house in a state of disbelief that in 12 hours I could feel so much. I thought about all the years in which I exterminated any feeling with vodka, and how to feel now, was extraordinary. To not feel pain without drinking was extraordinary. To survive something really tough without drinking was a miracle. And I did it. I was light and airy.
The next day we did go to get that X-ray done. Another Uber ride across city lines and police barricades, and it was a treat. It was like anything was a treat now. So maybe there is the answer to my initial question…. Yes, getting a root canal is worse than almost anything else you can imagine.
It was a sunny day and the open-air markets were bustling with people. Knockoff Nike hoodies, racks of sunglasses claiming to be Gucci or Guess, and more overwhelmingly, people. It was as if I wanted to consume the sensation of being near people. I wanted to see people contemplating purchases, making bargains, shopping for pots and pans as if the world was not in crisis. I was not in a crisis. This breath, even though cloaked in a mask, was fresh and life-giving. And yes, also conflicted. I know we are supposed to be indoors, or distanced, or sanitized, but damn seeing a vibrant Brazilian open-air market was medicine today.
After we got the X-ray taken care of, I was on a mission to buy new running shoes and Fabian was steadfast in his canny ability to spot the shops that sold “truchos” or fakes. After an hour of meandering and basking in waves of smells of caramelized nuts, fresh popcorn, and churros, all things I could not eat, we found a sporting good store and took part in the lust-filled experience of buying something in person after living inside four walls for five months. Trying on the shoes was like getting high. The feel of the fabrics and what they looked like on my long legs in the full-length mirrors. We have one mirror at home, about the size of a compact, so seeing my body again was fascinating. I bought the shoes and I even bought the little black socks that they give you try on the shoes with because I liked the soft feel of them. Everything was real. We left the store carrying a big plastic bag, proof of our outing, and sat in an open-air plaza. The sun cooked our foreheads and we soaked in being real people, outside doing real things. The gifts of three root canals.
When we got home the dentist got on a call with us to explain what the X-ray had confirmed, a fractured tooth (which she blamed on the first dentist), and an abnormal root. I was going to need special medication that the dentist would order online. For another week I was supposed to delicately eat only using the right side of my mouth. Oh yipee. We were supposed to go on a road trip this week. I guess it will be a tour of mushy foods!
We had enough time to hang up the call and catch the sunset, using my new running shoes to the summit of a hill near our house. This rocky mass is called Pai Vitorio and it is part-jungle and part-ocean rock with a horrid history that has led to its current use as a ritual site. In the mid-1800s after the importation of slaves was outlawed in Brazil forcibly by British embargo, illegal slave traders would use this rock to conceal the beaches where they would unload shiploads of slaves from Eastern Africa. It later became the site where escaped slaves would take refuge, and also the site where sick slaves were thrown off cliffs and into the rocky floor below to die. All of this has been articulated in handwritten then typed documents recording the history of this neighborhood, Rasa, named for the African Race, whose ancestors are now the predominant landowners. We have a copy of all these papers put together into a clipboard on our dining table given to us by the owner of the house where we are now staying.
The top of the hill is still charged with this energy. At night it is said you can still hear the voices of the escaped slaves. This is where after dark, locals meet for Makumba gatherings. There are natural clearings and sometimes candle residue, the shadow of a ritual, or a prayer.
We also take time to pray at the top of the hill. The sky became a faded wash of purples dipping into pinks and soft blues. I naturally think of these moments as Instagrammable, but in my recent Instagram sabbatical, I have realized how these are really God moments. When God is most clearly revealing herself in hues, and whispers, and nudges, and winds.
We walked out to the edge of the rocks at the very top where one large pillar had been salvaged to create a lookout post. Fabian quickly climbed on top of it. I noticed a note neatly folded on white lined paper jammed inside a hole in the rock. “Olha” I say. Look! He hopped off and dug out the crumbled white piece. The page is full of gratitude prayers.
I am thankful for my daughter.
I am thankful for my service to you.
I am thankful for my family and house.
We both grew smiles that extended from ear to ear. It was a physical manifestation of what we were both feeling. The mysterious paper was the exclamation mark on this moment and we laughed as we tucked it back in place.
Fabian and I stayed silent atop the hill looking out into the blanket of pale purple sky. Three giant Urubus, black birds of prey caught the wind and glided over us. The grass whispered.
Pain can make silence so audible. When you are in pain it is the only thing you hear. The depths of dark caves of pain that steal all other noise into nothingness. And the absence of pain. When every bird and blade of grass is soothing. As if knowing pain brings you closer to gratitude for now, when you feel entirely content in this moment just as it is. That is feeling pain, and the place where it once took up space.
I imagine the writer of this note. I imagine that during these times, perhaps he is without work. Maybe it is really difficult to create a home that is filled with ease for his family during times of total uneasiness. Maybe dinners are smaller and nights are without sleep. I imagine his grateful heart and how that might radiate outwards. I don’t even know him, but he has touched us both tonight with that sense of gratitude. We don’t even know who we are affecting when living in gratitude.
The next day in my recovery meeting someone read the long version of the serenity prayer. I didn’t even know there was a long version, but in it is the line: Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace.
Thats it.
Pain is the pathway to peace. And to gratitude. And the ability to touch the place where pain once lived, and keep on living through it. Even if that means getting a triple failed root canal, late on a sunday night.
