A Dental Patient’s View of the Mayan Calendar

(WARNING:  This post contains vivid descriptions of a type of oral surgery.  If you strongly dislike visiting a dentist’s office, or cringe and feel faint when some of the unspeakable procedures conducted there are openly discussed, then close this page and come back in a week.)

Back in September I wrote a post about the “Mayan Calendar and the End Of Time.”  Well, December 21, 2012 is less than a week away, and due to an emergency dental referral, I’ll be spending it  undergoing an Apicoectomy (Ape-icko-eck-tuh-me) at the hands of my local oral surgeon.  Of course, the confluence of this unplanned procedure and infamous date, made me begin to wonder if there was more than coincidence involved.  Were those pesky Mayans plotting to screw up my dental affairs?  Had they singled me out as the sole recipient of their calendar’s wrath?

Nah…, the procedure didn’t seem to be that big a deal.  After all, “ape” means a “large, tailless primate,” and “ectomy” means “surgical removal.”  So my initial thought was that my dentist was suggesting a therapy where I visited a zoo, and witnessed a tree surgeon removing a stranded orangutan from the canopy of a fake rainforest.  He wasn’t, however.  What he meant was far less entertaining than that. 

Similar to when I took Geometry twice, it seems an old root canal had given up and failed.  To POSSIBLY save the tooth, then, an apicoectomy was suggested.  He said it wasn’t a big deal.  The oral surgeon would simply cut a trap-door-like incision in my gum, then lift the tissue away and expose the tooth’s root.  Of course, he might have to remove some of the bone, too, but heck… he does that all the time. 

Now if the root isn’t cracked, this makes the chances better that the tooth can be saved.  In that case, the friendly endodontist will whip out his trusty saw, and chop off the root end of the infected tooth.  Of course, he might also have to scoop out a little more of the surrounding gum tissue to assure that all the infection is gone.  Not to worry, though… he probably has a little scooping tool made just for that. And I’ve heard he makes ice cream cones at Baskin Robbins on his day off.

After the root tip has been truncated, the cavern in my gum will be medicated, and the root sealed with a silver filling. (No, the Lone Ranger is NOT doing the procedure!)  Of course, the rest of the crater created by the now evacuated bone and tissue, will be retro filled with an expensive, synthetic bone material not covered by my dental plan.  Then the oral surgeon will reposition the gum flap like a puzzle piece, and suture it back in the correct place.  That shouldn’t be a problem either… as he learned embroidery from his wife, and it’s become one of his most passionate hobbies.
 
Anyway, when I awake from my peaceful slumber, my tooth will hopefully be  as good as new.  BUT… if by chance the good doctor happened to find a crack in the root while he was cutting and scraping and probing and scooping, it’s going to end up just like me in those Geometry classes I mentioned… up and out of there!   Yes… upon regaining consciousness, I may learn that dear old tooth #4 has be purged from my mouth, and become a discarded “former” member of the Paisano mastication team.

Considering this flood of new information, then, I must reluctantly admit there may well be a Mayan connection between December 21, 2012 and this pending apicoectomy.  And for me, it  might truly spell disaster.  Perhaps those “end time” theorists who are predicting a world-ending “polar shift,” were basically right, but made a slight translation error by switching two letters in the code.  Maybe instead of a “polar shift,” it really should have read, a “molar shift.”  That sounds like a tooth extraction to me… and a shift from my mouth to a trash can!