Last night Ithaqua, the Great Old One known as the “Wind-Walker” took a walk through our corner of Dunwich. This morning when I arrived for breakfast Camera Girl said, “Don’t get excited.” These are three of my least favorite words. This is what she showed me:
Well, that’s not technically right. When I first saw it, the tree was hung up in the branches of two trees on the left side of the driveway. It took considerable yanking on the trunk with a rope that I managed to throw over it before it finally came crashing down on the ground.
Camera Girl told me to call the “tree guy” and have him take his chain saw to it and get it out of the driveway. This didn’t sit right with my rock-ribbed conservatism and spirit of self-reliance.
I got out my bow saw and other paraphernalia and got to work. I sawed the trunk. I took a hammer and a pry bar to it. I used an automobile jack to jack up one side. I even climbed on top of it and jumped up and down on it. Finally, a combination of all these actions succeeded. Seven hours later a tired but morally self-satisfied man emerged drenched in sweat, favoring a sore lower back and triumphant over this malevolent natural disaster.
I think Winston Churchill will forgive me if I paraphrase him in saying, “Never have so few owed so little to me.”
So unfortunately, when I went to the endodontist on Thursday, he confirmed that there is indeed a crack in the root of that molar. And that means that a root canal will not prevent the tooth from becoming infected again. The tooth must be extracted. So, I said “Okay, let’s do that.” Imagine my chagrin to discover that endodontists don’t extract teeth. And as it then turned out neither does my dentist. In fact, at this point I don’t think he does anything at all as a dentist except refer me to other dentists! So eventually I found a dentist who will extract the tooth but not until Tuesday (it’s Memorial Day weekend you know.) All talk about implants will be delayed until this simple procedure is completed and I can eat food without my mouth aching or worse.
But it has been an educational experience into the arcane world of dental specialty practices. Most of my discussions with the office personnel consisted of them warning me that I would have to pay them the full amount of the procedures and attempt on my own to get my dental insurer to reimburse me some pathetic subset of my outlay. Well, one thing for sure. A lucrative dental practice does not guarantee good taste in office art design. Some of the photographic decorations that I sat looking at as a patient were not that inspiring. Although I did like them better than the abstract paintings that some of their colleagues favored. Honestly there should be laws or at least professional ethics guidelines to protect people suffering from dental pain from being exposed to these awful things. Well, Tuesday is just around the corner. Surcease from sorrow is a mere ninety-six hours in the offing. Unless the climate gods unleash a biblical plague of fiery hail I should be “detoothed” by Tuesday morning.
