I love my smile. It’s a little crooked and little different, but my teeth are little and white and my chin looks awesome when I smile. I had a lot of dental work when I was a kid – had to have two adult molars removed when they started growing in because my jaw was too small for grown up teeth; I had a space retainer for ages; I ground my teeth when I slept for most of my childhood (a stress thing, apparently); and got lots of those old school silver fillings – and dental work from when you’re a kid doesn’t, it seems, last forever.

About two weeks ago, one of those old silver fillings actually fell out. They can do that. During a week of city-wide mourning and turmoil, I put off getting it fixed until about 6 days after it had originally fallen out. Finally at the dentist, I learned I needed a root canal. My first. They did what they could to alleviate the pain that morning and sent me on my way with pain killers.

Since then, I’ve dealt with it and done more research on Boston dentists than I ever cared to do in my life. Emergency dentists are not as available as I would have thought. Regular dentists take weeks to bring you in and then require full work-ups before they can even consider looking at your root canal. And then, once they’ve brought you in, it takes weeks to get another appointment and root canals and caps take multiple visits over multiple weeks. These are all days off of work, sick days if you’re lucky enough to paid personal time, and weeks on end of excruciating pain in my mouth and general head area.

All I want is a root canal. I’ve been to the dentist. They told me I need a root canal and then didn’t do one. I’m willing to spend the money, I have dental insurance that I pay for every month. And yet – I cannot find a dentist who will give me a root canal, who will let me give them my money, who will make this pain go away (even Vicodin isn’t doing it).

So, seriously, how hard is it to get a root canal?!