Second thoughts?

When I called Dr. Burton’s office before deciding for sure on the root canal, I thought I heard her over the phone talking with Libby raising questions about the root canal. But Libby assured me everything was OK. Dr. Burton, before I left, said she wanted to send me to endodontist – just in case – before I went to Guatemala. But she thought that if I brushed with Sensodyne toothpaste, flossed, and applied peroxide to the tooth and gums, my tooth would recover. She thought Dr. Norton might give me antibiotics for my trip in lieu of any immediate root canal. She also thought the her gum destruction was helping cause the problem.

But – once I got there – Dr. Norton was emphatic that the gums were not the problem and that this pulpitis was non-reversible and I was persuaded to go ahead with the root canal.

It was not because I couldn’t take the discomfort for the trip, and not just that Dr. Norton or I were nervous about what might happen in Guatemala. It’s that Dr. Norton sounded so sure and he was so persuausive.

Now, I don’t know if it’s true what I’ve quipped – that Dr. Norton never met a tooth that he didn’t want to root canal. In this particular case, I actually side with Dr. Norton – that my tooth was so sensitive (something Dr. Burton really may not have appreciated) that it was never going to recover – Thanks to be reduced again for the veneer and then due to stress from the multiple surgeries – reducing it, adding the temporary cover, taking this off and adding the ceramic veneer. It was just too much for the tooth.

Dr. Burton may have been feeling sub-consciously defensive, because she may have picked up that I was never that gung-ho about this – especially if it was going to kill my remaining live front tooth – if it was going to force another root canal. I knew all along that this was a risk, but maybe it was more likely than Dr. Burton calculated.

Still, it was odd to hear that this dental surgery that I was really trying to avoid was indeed avoid-able and that it happened only because of a bad decision I made on the spot. (Only today did Dr. Burton say that other endodontists are more conservative but that I really like Dr. Norton) – This is too extreme. Last time I first went to two endodontists, incliding a woman with a Dixie Highway office whose office is really far away. Perhaps I should have done this this time. But I was starting to run out of time.

Still, I would have liked Dr. Burton to have said today – Look, I know you really didn’t want to have another root canal and perhaps in hind sight I underestimated how likely it was that all of this surgery would have triggered the need for another root canal. I miscalculated, and I’m sorry. But – as nice and as skilled as she is – I never heard those words or anything like them today.

-- Perry