Member-only story
Root Canal!
Suspense! Adventure! Pain!
Who says that all the adventure and intrigue have vanished from life by the time you’re a senior? Balderdash! As long as you have teeth in your mouth, there’s plenty of potential for suspense and mayhem.
My own dental adventure began innocently enough. I was processing books at the library where I work while cheerfully chomping on a delicious piece of vanilla taffy, when I suddenly felt an odd sensation inside my mouth. I couldn’t identify what it was… but I knew that something dental had just gone wrong.
Little did I know that one of my crowns was coming loose!
(Cue the dramatic “all hell is about to break loose” soundtrack.)
A few more bites and the crown detached entirely. Luckily, I was able to spit it out before it “went south.”
My pal Sara wasn’t so fortunate. When her crown came off, she swallowed it, after which her dentist instructed her to, euphemistically, “wait for it to come out the other end.” This meant buying a batch of latex gloves and prospecting through her own — ahem — output, until she finally found the “buried treasure” several days later, a little project that enchanted her 5-year-old son, as it combined two of the things that he, as a little boy, adored most — his mother and poop.
