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Posted By Katie On May 3, 2012 10 Comments

Thankful Thursday: Rural root canal

Filed Under: Small Town Living Tagged With: rural healthcare 10 Comments

I’m having a root canal this afternoon. There’s a lot of history to this root canal. I’ll spare the details but it started when I was nine years old when I fell off my bike and kept smiling. That front tooth I chipped at age nine has been giving me fits for decades. 

Years ago, I had a root canal on the tooth. It has a permanent crown. But what I have now is a “failed root canal” and I have a large infection around the base of root of the tooth. No big deal for a dentist. After some antibiotics, Vicodin for painkiller, I am smooth sailing. This afternoon will be the final step to make it better. There is thankfulness for my infection and failed root canal.
Why?
Because we live 100 miles from a town of more than 1000 people. We live in the most elderly county per capita in the United States. But we have a dentist. Not just any run of the mill dentist, a young dentist with superb dental school training, big city experience and he chose our small town to take over an long time dental practice. He married a woman originally from Philippines who was working at our local hospital. Now they have a baby. We now have a rural dentist with roots here. He relieved my pain yesterday.
Unabashedly, I learned I would rather have a baby than have the tooth pain I had yesterday afternoon. I am thankful for rural medicine. For rural dentists. For rural doctors. I’m even thankful for root canals. I can’t imagine living on the prairie without them.
Tomorrow, after a little recovery tonight, I will be in the eye of the oil field where through my work we are a part of the Pride of Dakota showcase where 95 small businesses will be selling their North Dakota products. I’m very excited to take pictures and blog about life in the center of the oil boom.
My last thankfulness of today is for my family. It’s chaotically busy this week. Track meets. State music. Piano recital. All for our teenager. But we have been sticking together and family helps out through the busy schedules and unexpected root canal for me.

Miss E makes me smile, even on the day I’m having a mighty root canal. This was her chosen outfit today.

I am thankful.
Linking up today with Wife of a Dairyman for Thankful Thursday…

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Comments

  1. TexWisGirl says

    May 3, 2012 at 4:56 pm

    a great positive spin on your pain and procedure!

    and cute little miss E!

    Reply
  2. edenhills says

    May 3, 2012 at 10:46 pm

    Amazing you can be so upbeat with such a painful topic. Hope you are feeling much better by now.

    Reply
  3. LindaG says

    May 3, 2012 at 10:56 pm

    Hope all goes well!

    Reply
  4. Robyn says

    May 4, 2012 at 5:22 pm

    Katie, I read this post yesterday and feel the same way about our rural health care providers.

    What I was not expecting was to experience such wonderful care yesterday afternoon.

    I missed/tripped over the first step going up the cement steps and landed on my face. I ended up with 6 stitches under my left eye and a pretty good shiner.

    Lucky for me my Mother-in-Law was my nurse (she fills in once in a while at the clinic). The PA that is full time at the clinic is awesome.

    I too, am thankful for high quality rural health care providers!

    Reply
  5. John @ rockymtnendodontics.com says

    May 6, 2012 at 6:48 am

    It’s good that your failed root canal was resolved. And surely there are a lot of things that we need to be thankful for and I like you I would like to thank our local community dentists who’s always there for us when we have a tooth problem 🙂

    Reply
  6. Aimee @ everydayepistle.com says

    May 8, 2012 at 6:34 pm

    Katie, I’m catching up on blogs & guess what? I’m having a “failed root canal” fix tomorrow! Mine erupted over Easter weekend. Ouch. It’s been giving me fits for years too, but my dentist kept saying there was no way it was the tooth bc I’d had a root canal–there were no nerves. Well, I’ve been vindicated. Some of us have more roots than expected under our pearly whites.

    Reply
  7. dentist laurel says

    May 16, 2012 at 2:29 am

    That procedure is really painful especially if it’s your first time. I hope that you’ve already recovered.

    Reply
  8. broomall cosmetic dentist says

    May 21, 2012 at 5:04 am

    Getting dental procedures can be really long, especially those type of procedure.

    Reply
  9. Linda says

    August 3, 2012 at 2:20 am

    There’s always something positive in any experience, no matter how painful they seem at first. I’m so glad I’ve always had a pleasant experience with my cosmetic dentist New York.

    Reply
  10. dentist lexington says

    August 6, 2012 at 9:54 pm

    After having a root canal procedure, eating hard solid foods is a no-no. Soft diet is advised for those who have undergone root canal extraction.

    Reply

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