Downtime, thanks to dental surgery

Periodontal surgery – specifically the infamous gum grafting, in which (gross-out alert: the squeamish should stop right here) a section of the roof of your mouth is excised and grafted onto your receding lower gumlines, after which sutures are applied to both the palate and the gumline – is probably not the idea way to score a couple of days off, but I have to admit I’ve been savoring the downtime.

After scheduling the dental surgery for Wednesday morning, I blocked off Thursday and Friday on my calendar as well, and I prepared ahead, bunching up on interviews and deadlines in the first half of the week so that I could leave those days entirely free.

I’m glad I did, too. After arriving home from the periodontist’s office around noon on Wednesday, I just wanted to go to bed. And it was great not having to tell myself “Bed, yes, but while you’re lounging around, finish that arts column….” I’d planned ahead, and it paid off.

The day and a half that followed were truly restful, despite the discomfort of recovering from dental surgery. Yes, my mouth hurt, but the house was warm and quiet, and I didn’t even think about trying to do anything productive. The first evening after the surgery, Rick made me a bowl of milky oatmeal; the following day I ate a vegetarian stew my mother made with tomatoes, spinach, onions and cous cous, cooked to a soft pulp that required no chewing. And then I went back to bed and read a book I’d been trying to get to for months.

I suppose I should plan life out better, so that it doesn’t take dental surgery for me to be able to lie around reading all afternoon. I suppose there’s an argument for doing that even when you feel fine. But at the moment, that’s just not how things are for me. My life is not unusually hectic, not at all, and yet between work, creative pursuits, family time and housework, there’s always something laying claim to my attention.

But not this week. This week I’m indulging. Aspirin, ice pack, pillows, novels. It’s still not quite enough to compel me to rush to schedule another dental surgery. But it makes knowing that I need to undergo another one a year from now seem not so very unappealing.

Be not afraid

During Sunday’s sermon, our Minister Emeritus shared his favorite quotation from Jesus: “Be not afraid.” The minister then ran through a litany of categories that most of us fear: change, stasis, sameness, differences, life, death, knowledge, ignorance, and so on.

He didn’t specifically mention dental surgery (nor did Jesus, as far as I know), but since I was 24 hours from my first scheduled gum graft, I took the message to heart anyway.

It’s so easy to let our fears rule us, whether those are truly profound fears such as terminal illness and national security or truly trivial fears such as temporary physical discomfort. My dentist first recommended that I see a periodontist seven years ago, and I’ve known since then that I’d eventually need to undergo gum graft procedures, but I managed to put it off year after year because I was so apprehensive.

The problem was that neglecting to schedule the procedure created a different fear: the fear of regular dental cleanings. First of all, the cleanings generate pain that might be alleviated once my gums are treated; but secondly, I always felt so abashed to have to admit that no, once again, I had not taken the dentist’s recommendation to schedule a periodontal appointment. Finally, two months ago, he instilled in me a new fear: the fear that my teeth would start falling out if I didn’t attend to this matter.

The gum surgery is now 48 hours behind me and I feel fine. Yes, there was a fair amount of discomfort during the procedure and a lot more as the Novacaine wore off throughout the afternoon. Yes, I’ve been hungry for the past two days since there’s so little I can eat during the short-term healing process. And yes, my left cheek looks like it is storing a golf ball.

But none of it is as bad as my fears led me to believe. “Be not afraid,” I should have told myself earlier, and then all of this would be done by now. But I was afraid, and so I’m undergoing the discomfort now that could potentially be seven years behind me by this point.

This experience, plus the minister’s reminder of Jesus’ words, made me think of the other fairly trivial things of which I’m currently feeling afraid. One significant source of apprehension in my life right now is seeing my kids grow older. At the ages of nine and thirteen, they seem to me to be at the absolutely ideal ages from a parenting perspective: they’re fun, happy, resourceful, independent and confident.

By this time next year, Tim will be in eighth grade and we’ll be learning about the systems and inner workings of the public high school, a setting I dread simply because it’s so unfamiliar to me. At nine, Holly embodies all the merriment of girlhood, but as Caitlin Flanagan’s controversial new book, Girl Land, and her frequent NPR interviews remind me, all kinds of scary things potentially lie in her path as she approaches early adolescence. In another sixteen months, our lease runs out and we’ll need to find another place to live. My parents and parents-in-law are healthy, but that won’t last forever. And are the kids’ college tuition funds in good enough shape at this point?

So much to be afraid of, and yet really nothing to be afraid of except the normal progression of a blessed life. Gum surgery isn’t pleasant, but not being able to afford or have access to necessary dental procedures is surely worse.

As I prepared to leave the periodontist’s office after the procedure, a woman in the waiting room smiled sympathetically at me. “You look really uncomfortable,” she said.

“Well, not uncomfortable enough to merit putting this off for seven years,” I admitted. Be not afraid. I’m not sure the singular experience of getting through a gum graft is enough to allay all of my daily anxieties, but it’s a lesson I’ll take to heart nonetheless, and try to put to good use going forward.

Not to worry

For much of the day on Saturday, I looked forward to a late afternoon run. After a hot summer during which it was essential most days to run before about 9 a.m. because of the heat, the cool crisp air was enticing, and so was the thought that the temperature didn’t need to dictate what time I headed out. So I went to Farmers Market, did some cooking, tidied up the house, and then I headed out at about 4:00.

And just as I’d expected, it was a beautiful day for running – the sun was strong by that time of day, but not oppressive, and the sky was bright blue – except that almost as soon as I started, I began to worry that I’d get hungry in the course of the five miles that lay ahead of me. And while it might sound funny to say I was worried about hunger – it’s not exactly like I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from, and the truth is that I have enough of a fat layer built up that I could probably hibernate if I chose to – becoming hungry while out on a run is an unpleasant experience. It makes me feel weak and shaky and clammy, which is not a good way to feel miles from home.

So I continued with the run and continued feeling like I’d sabotaged myself by not having a snack before heading out, until gradually something became clear to me: I actually wasn’t hungry. I was just worried about becoming hungry. And the idea that this might turn into an unpleasant run was ruining what had in fact the potential to be a great run.

So I made myself stop worrying about how things might turn out and instead just enjoyed what was in fact happening.

The more I thought about it afterwards, the more I realized how easily and frequently I allow anxiety about what could transpire subsume pleasure at what is actually transpiring. When we went to Colorado last month, I worried in advance that for various reasons the vacation wouldn’t turn out well. It turned out to be a magnificent vacation, but once I got home I felt like I’d cheated myself out of the fun of the anticipation because I’d been so apprehensive.

Last week an even starker example took shape. I needed to write an email to a colleague asking for a problematic favor that I suspected he would reject. I spent weeks agonizing over the necessity of writing the email. I put it off as long as possible. And then I gradually came to realize that no possible outcome of asking the favor could measure up to my dread of doing so. No matter what he said – even if he said there was no chance he would help me – hearing that wouldn’t be as oppressive as the fear that had built up in me over making the request. And so finally I wrote the email – not so much because I’d conquered my fears as because time had run out – and indeed, hearing his answer wasn’t so bad at all, even though it wasn’t an unqualified “yes.” As I’d come to suspect, no answer could have merited the apprehension I’d allowed to develop.

In a way, I think of this syndrome as “Life as a dentist appointment.” I’ve long dreaded going to the dentist because I have sensitive gums that make routine cleanings extremely uncomfortable for me. I worry for weeks ahead of each appointment, and I usually go into a cold sweat once I get to the dentist’s office. And even though about three years ago my dentist discovered an anesthetic gel that all but obliterates my gum sensitivity problem during cleanings, I still have the same panicky symptoms approaching the appointment, whereas if I looked objectively at the fact that thanks to the new gel, the gum problem isn’t really an issue anymore, I could bypass the awful feelings – the pounding heart, the sweating – altogether.

As it happens, I have a dentist appointment later this week, and I’m commanding myself not to go into a tailspin of anxiety over it. I won’t let apprehension ruin even a few minutes of another run, either, and I’ll try not to let anxiety about outcomes get in the way of my work anymore. It’s easier said than done, but it’s a lesson that’s slowly taking hold. If you have the opportunity to go running on a beautiful day, I now try to remember, just take in the beautiful day; don’t worry about how you might feel a mile or two in. Because the reality is you might not feel that way at all. On Saturday, the gorgeous weather was a certainty; the clammy, ill feeling that comes with hunger pangs while running was only a possibility. I’m trying hard to learn to let the sure thing, and not the anxiety-producing possibility, be my guide.