Sad Eyed Lady of the Root Canal

I just want to know what you have to pay to get out of going through all these things twice? Apologies to Bob, just got home from I'm Not There and am seeing Dylan lines everywhere. I was singing that in the dentist's chair this afternoon during a second and totally unprepared for root canal on no. 14. I had the first one last Tuesday afternoon, as poor old Heath lay dying, and fortunately had the rest of the day off to recover. Little did I know I was only half way through. This is exactly why I never go to women dentists. The three I have had in my life have all been the same sadistic type. This one I had to see as a referral since my dentist doesn't do root canals. This lady took my insurance, which is not the greatest, so I hadn't much choice with the rather urgent nature of the case. I had postponed looking into the constant dull ache until after the holidays so by last week it had gotten rather unpleasant. Two hours of drilling through the crown, reaming around and yanking out three calcified canals I guess was not enough, so I went back today and had to go through the whole process again. She did not say last week that there would be further surgery required. I thought today was just a checkup so I didn't ask for more than an hour off work and didn't eat lunch first. During the surgery she was talking on her cell phone every 10 minutes, lining up creative writing work, chatting to her assistant and asking her what she thought of her writing. I finally yanked the suction thing out of my mouth and announced that I had to get back to work and why wasn't I told that I would need 2 more hours of root canal? It was almost 3 hours before I got back to my desk and then had to format a complicated financial document. But my super called me in later to say I had gotten a good raise for this year, so I guess that helped ease the pain. At least they gave me a decent painkiller this time after last week's script failed to kill the pain for very long and made me ill.

I don't know what this has to do with High Church but I feel like in a way we are going through a bit of a root canal at the moment, both locally and nationally. Some roots are dying, some have calcified and must be removed, all with great pain but ultimately to save the teeth themselves from being pulled. San Joaquin has extracted themselves and others will likely follow before it's over. We had a good annual meeting last Sunday, but at the end that painful extraction we endured last Spring resulted in a diatribe from one that made us all realize that for some those wounds are still fresh. All in all there was a lot of positive news such as a good pledging base and the coming north wall restoration, and plans to renovate the Undercroft are also brewing, so it should be a lively and early Spring.

ETA: Update on that white-coated idiot dentist: I got a bill for $618 with a note that Dr. Goofoff does not accept my insurance so I am liable for the full amount, this after she had assured me that I would only have to pay $250 and the insurance would cover the rest. I wrote her and the other dentists in that group a letter today detailing the whole debacle and asking that the charges be dropped in light of the negligence on her part and the incredibly unprofessional manner in which she treated me. We'll see what she has to say about that.