My Loss…© 2015

By Dee-Dee Diamond

I’ve had it for about 72 years. It's being gone makes a hole in my being. Thru literally fat times and lean times it did the job. Hot or cold, hard, or soft.

It came to me visually when I was a young girl in pigtails, worked during my wild puberty, as a young married, motherhood, grandmother-hood, and some of my widowhood.

Truly a workhorse and unappreciated part of me, but he or she started being a pain!

Now with one equivalent jarring earthquake and a geyser, it left its secure home, reluctantly…forever.

Two root canal intervention- attempts to preserve it in its historical site proved only temporary fixes.

Both repairs lasted for a while, but like your mother-in-law’s whining… the throb returned.

Professional advice was called for…this fossil had to go!

My dentist is a slight Russian American woman who was part of “the Refusnik” immigrant community. She administered 3 long needles to numb the site, while trying to placate my fear by cooing, “Douhtonnn vorry, you’ll vee oak-kay, Darling “.

My eyes are closed tightly, my knuckles are white, my legs are stiffly straight -out …I’m poised for a battle!

Then Dr. Bartkora puts her cold, hard vise in my clamped wide- open mouth and twists and pulls and jerks and grinds…then sighs. She asks her assistant for another more ominous wrench, (in Russian), but I got the gest. I hear another crunch of dead tooth that cracks midway…oh no! I receive another needle. Help!

Now the tall assistant holds onto the dentist’s waist, then they pull together.

They fall backwards slightly, as the stubborn back molar pops its nest!

“Oh, my gawd”! I feel like I went through labor…as we chuckled, “The baby is out”!

Still the dentist and her helper’s “rubber-gloved paws” are busy in my mouth, with instruments sucking, depositing, stitching, snipping with deep concentration. My face feels like it’s becoming a carved Halloween pumpkin.

The bill for my lost and tossed broken tooth is paid… before I exit this torture chamber.

Leaving, I’m spent…physically…emotionally and monetarily!