The (Toothy) Casque of Amontillado
I went my dentist the other day with swollen gums and walked out with a murdered tooth. He called it a root canal, but that’s just what passes for euphemism in the dental community. This was an execution.
How could this happen? Well. Apparently, some portion of the inside of one of my molars got sick and began to die — and, in a macabre process of creeping necrotism, infected the rest of the tooth. Until all I had left were thin canals of undead tissue, rotting slowly. My dentist went in with little filaments and scraped it all clean, so now the tooth is just a lifeless husk — robbed of nerves and a blood supply, it’ll get weaker and more brittle over time, until it eventually shatters, or falls apart.
It’s all very sad. Sadder still is the other tooth, in the bottom of my mouth, that has also been quietly, undemonstratively dying for some time now. The doc discovered it in an x-ray: same deal, a shambling zombie tooth, in its death throes, cannibalizing the tissue around it.
There’s nothing especially rare or tragic about a root canal, I suppose. Happens all the time, and — modern dental technology being what it is — I’ll end up with two fake but largely impervious super-teeth. So no big deal. But the thought of two pieces of me dying silently over a period of years, going quietly mad in their enamel tombs, gives me the willies.
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