When I was in high school, my mom went to the dentist and had a cavity filled with no anesthetic.
Because she was nuts.
Here’s what happened, as best as I can remember.
She showed up to the dentist and he had fallen behind. The patient before my mom had to have her jaw replaced or something. I’m exaggerating. That’s not it. Anyway, by the time Dr. Painless Feelgood got to my mom, it was only ten minutes until quitting time, and he had to bolt out of the office and get ready for some tooth conference. Or dental dinner. Whatever.
He apologized and said he could reschedule her, but my mom said “Well, how long does it take to fill a cavity? Can’t you just…do it?”
He said that it takes several minutes for the anesthesia to take effect. “Don’t give me the anesthesia,” my mom said.
He told her it would be really painful, but my mom had given birth to two boys, one of whom (me) was a breach so she was not impressed by the dentist’s definition of “pain.”
So, the dentist filled my mom’s cavity with no anesthesia.
She came home shaken and exhausted.
Later, she tried to describe the experience of “transcending pain” as she lay there amidst all the drilling and spittle and nerve endings and that awful burn smell that wafts in the air when the dentist is going to town on your molars. “You’re crazy,” I said. And I told all my friends about how nutty my mom was, although secretly I thought she was bad ass.
When I was 21, I had to have two wisdom teeth removed. Warning: Graphic Description of Dental Procedure to follow (although if you’ve made it this far…) I came home from college for the procedure. Both teeth were impacted and would…not… come…out. I remember the the dentist grabbing at my tooth with that metal thing, placing his foot on the chair to brace himself and pulling like he was hauling out someone who had fallen into a well. There was no pain (because my dentist never even entertained the obscene notion of operating on me with no anesthetic) but it felt like my skull was being yanked out of my frame. Didn’t work, though. That tooth was still in there. Eventually, he used a drill to break the tooth into tiny pieces and pick the shards out of my mouth bit by bit.
Still with me?
That night, I took a pain med and threw it up. So, I took another med and threw that one up as well. I took a Tylenol but given how much yanking and drilling I’d been through, it was a little like putting a band aid on a burn victim. By midnight, the pain was unbearable. I did something I hadn’t done since I was five years old. I went upstairs to my parents’ room, weeping, and crawled into their bed. My mom woke up and stroked my head.
Reminder: I was 21 years old.
“Don’t fight it,” my mom said. “You’re fighting against the pain. Don’t fight it, just give into it. Fall into it. It’s a big ball of flame in front of you and it seems scary but it’s not. Just walk right into it. Let it surround you.”
I fell right to sleep. The next morning the pain was…well, not gone completely, but at least tolerable.
A couple of weeks ago, my 85-year old mom took a spill in her bedroom and wound up breaking three ribs. Her caregivers drove her to the ER and she was transferred to another hospital an hour away from home.
Since 2017, my mom had been battling a series of mostly-undiagnosed ailments, both mental and physical. She started having delusions and was put on an anti-psychotic med. She had no prior history of mental illness, which made it all very mysterious. But when she didn’t take her meds (which she often forgot to do) she stopped talking, stopped swallowing, refused to go anywhere and slowly slipped into catatonia. Several visits to hospitals and a month-long stay in a psychiatric facility (In Denver, four hours away from her home) ensued.
It’s a really long story that was grueling to experience but would be boring to read. Suffice to say, mom was never quite the same after that. But…BUT…as my brother and I will both tell you, mom was still in there. She didn’t talk much, couldn’t hear well, and often spent time staring into space. But there were moments when she was all there. 100% present. We saw her laugh. We saw that snarky gleam in her eye – the one that meant “You and I both see the ridiculous thing that’s happening now, right?”
But then there were the other times when my dad would call me to say mom was having a “difficult moment” and needed to talk to me. I’d spend an hour on the phone with her, listening to her rapid breathing as she was being consumed by a panic attack – trying to get her to focus on where she was and who she was until she was able to calm down.
Anyway, leapfrog to two weeks ago.
Since arriving in the hospital after her fall, mom had slipped back into catatonia, and they couldn’t bring her out of it. Maybe it was because they screwed up her meds (which they did) or maybe it was just all too much for her to take. Maybe she was just done. After several days of trying various combinations of meds, she couldn’t wake up. One night, the doctor called me to say that she was aspirating and was in a lot of pain and recommended transitioning to comfort care. My wife, Allison, and I flew out to Colorado the next morning. My brother, Brad, and his wife, Laura, followed shortly after.
If you ever need to put someone in hospice, I recommend Miranda. I don’t know her last name. Nor can I recall who she worked for. But Miranda was great. She knew how to talk to grieving family members without all the faux, comforting soft-talk. Mom would have hated that. Death was normal to Miranda. She told me that even though mom was asleep, she was probably still aware of what was happening. She said that the hearing is the last thing to go. She said that people in mom’s situation usually don’t choose to go until they feel at peace doing so. She asked us if we had said our goodbyes yet.
I was in the hospital for about 48 hours, with the exception of three hours during which I checked into a hotel for a shower and nap. Brad brought my father to the hospital, and they all sat with mom for a while. I spent the whole night there on February 10th. It was weird. I had the whole hospital to myself and no one asked what I was doing there.
February 11th was mom’s 85th birthday. We sang to her. That night, everyone went home and Allison and I stayed. My dad needed someone to look after him and Brad and Laura were up to the challenge. I spent hours in mom’s room, listening to her breathe. I read her poetry – poetry she had written (mom wrote poetry her entire life.) I reminisced. I told her my favorite memories of our time together. I played her the mix CD of cowboy songs that she made me 25 years ago.
She continued to breathe.
Miranda was surprised that she had held out this long. “Some people go quickly once they’ve transferred to hospice. Some people take days.”
Eventually, the CDs had been played, the poetry had been read and the stories had been shared. But mom was still hanging on. Maybe she didn’t want to go. Maybe she was scared. Maybe she was in pain.
“Hey mom,” I said. “Remember that time I got my wisdom teeth out? Remember what you told me?”
David Lee White 