Lori Duff Writes

One of the jokes I tell too often, still expecting a laugh is: “I’d rather get a root canal than be doing” whatever it is than I am currently doing.  Usually that thing is some boring, useless meeting, but that’s not the point.  The root canal is the point. 

I said that having never had a root canal, but knowing that a root canal was an invasive dental procedure only undergone after experiencing great pain, and it is a universally understood that one generally wants to avoid having invasive dental procedures and great pain.

Now.  Summing up a lot of details you don’t care about into as few words as possible, I had a filled cavity in a molar.[1] A few years ago, I was dutifully flossing my teeth and a chunk of that tooth came away along with bits of plaque and whatever else.  The filling had outlived its usefulness and needed to be redone.  And so it was.  But after that, the tooth was sensitive, and I became one of those people who used special expensive toothpaste and drank water without ice.

Until one night a few weeks ago.  It began to hurt.  I have given birth multiple times.  I have been in the emergency room on Christmas Eve with a gall bladder the size of a cantaloupe.  I shattered my wrist into smithereens playing pickleball.  I got pneumonia the day after getting stitches in my eyeball[2].  I know pain.  This, my friend, was pain. 

My daughter, who had just had her wisdom teeth out, took a minute to believe I wasn’t just trying to steal her mouth-pain-thunder.  I get it.

I still had to do a mediation at work.  I chewed on a handful of ibuprofen, stuffed my mouth with cottonballs of lidocaine, and rested my cheek against bags of frozen mixed vegetables during breaks. 

Eventually, I made my way to an endodontist, Dr. Waters.  Dr. Waters was kind and sympathetic and got right down to business.  The root canal itself was completely painless and only took about a half hour, much less time than those endless, pointless meetings.  And when it was over, I felt better than I had in a while.  Now, a couple of weeks out, I didn’t realize how many problems I had that the root canal solved.  I can eat ice cream and scalding hot soup again.  Nothing hurts.  I even get fewer headaches.

So I’ll probably keep on saying it: I’d rather have a root canal than go to this meeting.  Only it won’t be a joke. 

[1] Molar #14 if you want that kind of clarity.

[2] Trying not to let the violent, wracking coughs of pneumonia pop a stitch in your cornea for fear of an eruption of eyeball goo is not for the weak of heart, let me tell you.

If you enjoyed this and want to read more like it, visit Lori on Twitter or on Facebook or read her award winning books.  You can order her novella, “Broken Things”, by clicking here.  The audiobook can be found on Audible or iTunes.  You can pre-order her novel “Devil’s Defense” coming in November 2024.

Lori Duff

Lori B. Duff is an award-winning author who practices law on the side.  Her latest book, “If You Did What I Asked in the First Place” was awarded the Gold Medal for humor in the Foreword INDIES awards in 2019. You can follow her on Twitter at @LoriBDuff and on Facebook. For more blogs written by Lori, click here. For more information about Lori in general, click here. If you want Lori to do your writing for you, click here. If you want Lori to help you market your book, click here.