Fainting During a Root Canal

I can’t say I was enjoying my first root canal, but I was pleasantly surprised by my first week in the dentist’s chair in Albania. It was kind of grueling, but not especially painful. In fact, I’ve had cleanings that hurt worse. Unfortunately, my final day in that chair was not an easy one. In fact, it got so bad that I thought I might end up at the emergency room.

I can’t stop myself from hating my dentist once the civility ends and he or she goes to work in my mouth. I feel bad about this because I realize they are trying to help me, but I become a wounded creature in that chair. Cleaning, drilling, scaling: I hate it all. But the sonic brush is the worst of all. It tickles my gums so brutally that tears come to my eyes and it takes all my concentration to stop myself from grabbing it away from the dentist’s hands.

The only pain I really suffered during the first week of my root canal in Albania was the cramping in my hands from gripping them together so tightly while the dentist worked. And it was not possible to finish the procedure that week as the root still showed some infection, so I would have to return for the final treatment.

The day finally came and, for once, I was relaxed at the dentist, eager to finish and be free. The plan was get it over with in the morning and then drive down the coast on the way to Himarë, a small town in southern Albania where we planned to stay for some time.

So I sat in the chair, opened my mouth wide, and thought happy thoughts while the dentist worked. Everything went well for the first thirty minutes or so. It was only near the end that I felt something was wrong. “Only five minutes left,” she told me in a reassuring voice. Maybe I was starting to squirm, although I felt fine until then. During the next five minutes I noticed that my jaw was beginning to feel kind of tired and I was really hoping it would end soon. Then it did.

“All done, you can close your mouth now,” she said and turned away.

She put away the tools and turned back to me again. “Luke, you can close your mouth now. We’re done.”

“Mmrrmmr,” is about all I could say. I really wanted to close my mouth. For the past few minutes I had been thinking about how nice it would be to close my mouth, but now I couldn’t do it.

“You can’t close your mouth?” She asked, a startled look on her face.

“Mmrrmmr,” I answered.

For the next few minutes she tried to get it closed, but nothing much worked. “I know what this is,” she said. “It’s the temporomandibular joint. But I’ve never seen it happen before.”

By this point I was thinking I probably wouldn’t be able to drive today and I realized I wouldn’t be able to drink a makiato later or join the family for lunch. I wouldn’t be able to do much of anything but drool and make strange throat noises.

The dentist stopped struggling with my jaw and I let my head drop back into the chair. I realized then that I was drenched in a cold sweat and my vision was beginning to go black. My jaw was still stuck open and a bit sore, but suddenly the rest of me felt a lot worse. My heart was pounding and I felt nauseous.

The dentist was talking on her cell phone getting instructions, saying something like, “ok . . . uh-huh . . . ok.” She must have noticed that I wasn’t looking so good because she put down the phone and leaned over me. “Luke, are you ok? Does it hurt?”

I tried to say I just needed a moment, but I couldn’t make the words. She reached into my mouth with both hands so that I almost gagged and pushed down hard on my jaw like she meant to remove it from my skull. It crunched loudly and then my mouth finally closed. Almost instantly my vision returned and the dizziness subsided. I felt almost as relieved about not fainting as about my jaw working.

I’ve fainted in public before and it is really embarrassing. People usually assume someone that suddenly drops is either dying or on drugs. Once I gained consciousness just in time to stop a paramedic from jabbing a needle into my chest. Another time, on a busy sidewalk in Bangkok, people walked around me shaking their heads in disapproval as if I were a junkie (it was malaria, not drugs that knocked me down that time). Fortunately, this time it ended with me walking out of the dentist on sturdy legs, happy with my new tooth and ready to hit the road.

Later in the day I happily sipped on a makiato, enjoying it even more than I usually do. I will probably avoid yawning or eating an apple for sometime though. And the dentist. I don’t plan to return to that chair anytime soon.