The phrase that strikes fear into all adults who hear it.

This has been an extremely bad year dentally for me. First my lower left baby premolar gave up the ghost, necessitating getting it pulled and replaced by an implant. Then in April my top right second-from-the-back molar started getting sensitive to cold. Several attempts over the months by my dentist to repair the underlying problems (bad filling, crack, exposed root—yes, I abused my teeth when I was a kid) were fruitless. The tooth just got worse and worse; and finally, after almost a week of excruciating pain (couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep), today I went to the endodontist to get the dreaded root canal.

Actually, after the buildup, the root canal itself was almost completely painless. I barely felt the anesthetic injections (all four of them). At the beginning there was a second of mild discomfort; that was the endodontist pulling out the remnants of the tooth’s pulp, most of which was already dead. After that I didn’t feel a thing, which made me mightily relieved. The procedure was long (two hours) and labour-intensive for the endodontist (lots of scrubbing the inside of the tooth with long, tiny files).

As the anesthetic wore off, however, I felt as though I had been run over by a truck (and note that the only other time I’ve ever used that simile was when I gave birth). It was worse than before the root canal; every part of my head hurt and all I could do was to try to become one with the couch and whimper. Poor Peter.

Now, several hours later, the Advil and Tylenol seem to have kicked in and hopefully I’ll be able to keep the pain under some semblance of control until the inflammation goes down. And maybe tomorrow I’ll be able to eat something more substantial than porridge.