Like Pulling Teeth

When I went into the University of Manitoba School of Dentistry to get my tooth pulled it wasn’t because I had a lot of options. I have been freelancing for years and I haven’t held a straight job since I left NCI-FM. That means no medical. No dental. No big deal. I lived my whole life like that.

Anyway at one of the last dental visits to an actual dentist I was told that the molar I had in the back was never going to get better. He was going to put a stem or screw or whatever he did and it would hold for as long as it would hold. It held a long time, although it hurt almost every day.  

When it would hurt really bad which meant some kind of infection or that I bit down on something hard usually a nut of some kind, some cheaper brand of baking walnuts for example will have a stray piece of walnut shell. At least twice it was a blueberry seed. The worst one was the dried blueberry seed that bugger was in deep for a couple weeks. I eventually got it out. My tongue skills are amazing.

I never stopped eating blueberries I just slurp them down. Why bite? You need those seeds.

I would treat by holding down an oregano oil pill and let it dissolve. Oregano oil is not only a pain killer but also an antibiotic so it is really a great treatment for an abscessed tooth or other toothy pain.

There was a point when I did that oregano oil thing for over a month. Usually it would be a couple days to a week.

I made this bit of comedy about the first time I was told I needed a root canal and that it would cost $600.00 (this was a while ago).

Anyway my Grandpa was still alive and I did this bit as him at my age then going off on the idea of paying that kind of money.

He had this wonderful accent rich with the Metis patois of French, English and Saulteaux.

“$600 for you fucking Teese! Boy boy boy you shtupid!”

Grandpa never really swore but he would definitely get righteous about wasting money on something that you don’t really need.

If you want to argue the need for every single tooth, you could not do it back when I was growing up in the historic Metis community of Crane River, Manitoba.

My mother’s best friend in the community, Florence Spence never grew teeth. She was toothless her entire life and yet raised an amazing family in a poor oppressed marginalized community and was the only person my mother trusted with her most precious possessions, her children.

You can’t argue for a tooth in that world.

Anyway I ended up under the light of a UofM dental student because the pain gave way to the actual movement of the tooth. I could wiggle it back and forth.

This was in January of 2018. I had driven home with my parents to bury my Mother’s baby brother, Don. He was known to us affectionately as The Don.

“The last of the old Sinclair boys” , Shane would say. We would take turns watching fire at the gravesite in -45 and colder windchills in order to be sure that the ground was thawed.

We heard the news on Christmas Eve and had to begin driving that day. My mother told me that we could wait until Christmas Day. I told her that we had to start driving right away. I did not have a passport and I was not a Status Indian, I could not cross the border. We would have to drive over the lakes on the Canadian side.

It was -37 and colder (before wind chill) for the drive and for the ceremony.

It was a very stressful but as with all family gatherings wonderfully affirming.

We are family.

Death always brings blame and anger. This is the truth.

Forgive everything during the mourning period.

It was not meant to be so cruel. It was not meant to be taken so cruel.

My tooth began to wiggle.

I was not going to be making as much money on this last part of the project as I had hoped. They wanted more from me. It would take travel and time and that took away money.

My family members offered different dental options.

I went with the University of Manitoba. It was not going to be more than $150.00 to pull that tooth.

I had $200.00 in my pocket.

When asked about medical conditions. I told the dental student that I didn't go to the doctor and took no medication but I believe I had high blood pressure. He asked how did I know and I said that the blood pressure machines at Walmart and Shopper’s Drug Mart told me so.

He checked my blood pressure.

His eyes were as wide as could be, he said, “We can’t do any work today. You are in what is called a hypertensive crisis and you should be in a hospital bed.”

A hypertensive crisis is anything higher than 180 over 120, my numbers were 237 over 167.

They sent me on my way to emerg. On foot. So I knew I was not dying at the moment despite the young dentist to be’s face.

I got the same face from the young doctor at emerg. I was supposed to be near death.

These numbers were really high.

Pretty high for a White Guy.

The Doctors in emerg realized that I was not dying and then gave me pills to ensure that I would continue not to die despite not dying without the pills they were going to give me.

I took the pills for a couple of weeks and then I wasn’t really feeling myself, if you know what I mean. I was maintaining my part of the marital bond but I wasn’t really feeling myself. 

"How long would it be?"

 A shudder ran though me. 

"Until I could no longer take care of my part of our mutual marital obligations."

I looked up the side effects of the “medicine” I was taking and one of the major side effects was erectile dysfunction. I threw the “medicine” right in the garbage.

I do not want to live that long.

That did not solve the tooth issue. In fact the sister tooth on the other side was now wiggling.

I didn’t know which one was the one that I remember being threatened but I knew they were both dying eventually and now they both dead. There was nothing to do with them but pull them out.

I didn’t have the money to get one tooth pulled. How was I going to get two teeth pulled?

I googled. How do you pull adult teeth?

The advice was “The same as you would pull a loose tooth as a child, keep wiggling it back and forth until it gets loose enough to pull out.”

I worked it for months. There were many times I thought I was wasting my time.

One day our granddaughter Brynn got another loose tooth. This one in front, not the buck teeth but one to the right.

This was perhaps her sixth or seventh tooth. She knew the deal. Tooth loose. Wiggle it. Wiggle it.

Real loose. Pop out. Money.

But it’s not really about the money. We remember it that way. That’s not it.

She also knew that magical thing about teeth and gums that we seem to forget when we get old. After the first big splash of blood, the healing begins immediately. Despite removing a chunk of bone from flesh and blood we do not pour blood out of our mouths.

I knew she had a wiggly tooth and then one day she just turned to me and her Grandma and she said, “look”!

Then she twisted the front tooth that is next to the buck teeth on the right hand side and she twisted it and I could hear it snap and I saw that triumphant look spread from her eyes across her face and through her entire body and across everything in the room including me and my wife.

I marveled at the will of the smallest among us.

I could take that tooth now. For the next couple of days I worked it hard. I did not use any pain pills or even oregano oil. I just smoked that sweet God Bud that a good friend had shared with us only with the promise we get him back one day. 

My mind was focused. My pain had been put in it’s right place. I wiggled and when it crunched free I almost melted.

In that brutal moment all the pain that lived with that tooth was gone.

I took the tooth out with one hand and with the other hand pressed hard with the gauze I had at the ready. Tears went down my face. They must have, though I can’t remember any, if there were, they were tears of joy. This pain was finished.

I had defeated it.

I folded another gauze and when I pulled out the first one there was less blood than I thought there would be, I looked at the rotten tooth in my hand and smiled, it wasn’t going to bleed much. It did not.

The same tooth on the right came out within the month. This time it was a little more complicated. The tooth was broken in half. A big chunk came out on a Friday night and even though it wasn't the whole thing -  it was still glorious. There was a big chunk of pain connected to that piece of tooth and that was gone forever.

It felt so good that I decided not to remove the second piece that night.

I put my cotton gauze up in the hole that was there and sure enough it healed up like nothing had happened.

On Sunday night I had a bath and I said I was going to bed early. In the darkness I methodically removed that last half of the tooth.

It was wonderful.

I Gorilla glued the two pieces together and put both molars in an empty pill bottle.

For a few weeks after, I would lay down on the bed and I would stare at the teeth. It would make me feel so warm and satisfied that I would fall asleep.

A couple of times my wife found me passed out with the teeth on my chest or on the bed beside me. More than a few times she found them on the bedside table.

Every time she was not impressed to look at my big rotten teeth.

So one day she threw them away and never left me a dime.

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