A root canal AND rotator cuff surgery? Lucky me.

     My dentist's office called after a routine cleaning and x-ray. Could I, they wondered, come back? Tomorrow. I got the sense if I said, "I can rush over now," they'd have replied. "Good, hurry." It was a matter of tone.
     The news was bad. An enormous cavity, growing hidden beside my upper right wisdom tooth. Maybe even invading the jaw bone. Requiring a root canal and crown. Probably lose the wisdom tooth too.
     "I like how you're so grim," I told the dentist, after he explained the situation. "It shows you care."
     Two hours in the chair for the root canal. Honestly, it didn't hurt — well, my left arm did, quite a lot, fallout from my ripped-up left shoulder. Holding it still for so long. I'd occasionally extend it, taking care not to upset a tray of tools or grope the dental hygienist.
     Then there was the enforced silence. Although, being me, I still tried to speak, with a dental dam plus dental instruments in my mouth. I wanted to tell the dentist how important Chicago is to the history of fluoridation. The initial experiments held in Evanston in 1946, with Oak Park as the control. Because he's a dentist. He'd be interested. Shutting up is an art form I struggle to master.
     But that isn't the most embarrassing part.
     The root canal was the first act. My next step was to the endodontist, to create a crown to go over the afflicted tooth, shaved down to a stump.
     More than three hours in that chair, including the wait while the crown was being sculpted by a high-tech medical printer. When I could speak again, this is what I said:
     "You know what I was thinking for the past two hours? And this will sound like I'm blowing smoke ... but I was thinking about how lucky I am to have access to high quality medical care like this."
     I really said that. And I meant it. Some 100 million Americans don't routinely see a dentist, usually because of the cost. Half the world's population suffers from untreated oral diseases, according to the World Health Organization.
     A reminder. You know what's much worse than a root canal? Not having a root canal.
     Honestly, the root canal/crown was plenty to hone my medical gratitude. But life has a way of laying it on. A couple weeks later, I went to get an MRI on the shoulder that has hurt me since I tripped and fell on a train platform in Portugal. I was hoping the doctor would say it was strained, perhaps prescribe warm healing oils be massaged into the area while listening to whale song.
     Badly torn rotator cuff. Which I could ignore, going to physical therapy, building up the muscles around the torn and useless muscle.
     Or I could have repaired by arthroscopic surgery. Cut a few holes in my arm, poke in a camera, set some anchors in the bone, sew the muscle back in place, out in an hour. Not even a night's stay in the hospital.

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