A Visit to the Dentist
© By Abraham Lincoln

Just when you think your body parts are all working together to push your next birthday to 79, something goes haywire and you can’t fix it. It happens to me all the time. I think it is a sure sign that I am aging—getting old—my ball of string is running out. Whatever you might choose to call it; my secret goal in life is to cheat the undertaker out of another payday.

How does one chew softly? Well, I have been chewing on a back jaw took lightly, like a ballerina tiptoes across a dance floor. I didn’t bite down hard because I felt pressure in the tooth and I knew something was wrong but I had a dream that it was all my imagination and my angst would pass.

I kept thinking about the new dentist I had met in the barbershop. I told him then that I might be up to see him soon. Weeks later I finally called the office of Joseph M. Rhodes, D.D.S. and asked if I could make an appointment to see the doctor. 

Sure enough, there was an opening the next day at 10:00 A.M. and I took it and showed up on time. In no time I was in the dental chair, laid back, opening my mouth wide, and showing Dr. Rhodes the offending tooth. I asked for an X-ray so we could all see what was going on.

The X-ray revealed, among other things: like the tooth was capped, that there was some infection or decay under the capped portion off to one side near the gum line. I thought the next step would be to set up and appointment, return and get it fixed.

I suddenly realized, when I saw the needle, that this was for real and I was getting the tooth fixed. I looked so surprised that Dr. Rhodes asked me if I wanted to get it fixed. I gulped out, “sure,” and the needle went in—here and there; and the tooth got numb.  

My lip was supposed to get numb but that never quite worked out to “feel fat” but after it was all over, the lip was so numb that I bit a couple of pieces out of it and was surprised to see a spot of blood on an ice cream cone. Where did that come from? I pulled my fat lip out and looked on the inside and saw two bite marks. I guess it did get numb after all.

I love dentists when I need them but I try to avoid them when I can. They know how to make you so numb that they can take the root out of a tooth and call it a “root canal” without much discomfort. They can pull teeth and if you didn’t hear the cracking sound the tooth makes, as it is breaking free, you’d never know the tooth had been extracted.

But when they stick a roll of gauze in the hole and tell you to bite down you know the tooth is gone and when the roll of gauze begins to hurt when you get home, it is a relief to pull the blood-stained gauze out; or so it seems to me.