Root Canal on the Road: My New York Times Piece

In September I wrote to the editor for the "frequent flyer" column in the New York Times, noting that my recent emergency root canal in Sacramento, while not the most pleasant experience (gripping a chair for two hours while a complete stranger ripped nerves out of my mouth was not the California experience I had in mind when I set out from New York the day before), might be good fodder for a piece.

She called me immediately, and said I should write it up. Most of the submissions for that column fall into the how-the-airline-lost-my-luggage category, and this was different. The fact that she was facing her own root canal for the first time the next day added to the intrigue. So I wrote it up, the Times sent a photographer for a photo shoot near our office in Union Square and here's what appeared:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/02/business/02flier.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Frequent Flier

That Big Bandage on My Head? Let Me Explain


By ROB DeROCKERPublished: October 2, 2007I try not to make a habit of medical emergencies during business trips. But when you fly over 100,000 miles a year, chances are good that something will go wrong. Especially when, on occasion, you make some less than inspired choices.

Last year right before a client meeting in San Juan, I made a trip to St. Croix, where my wife and I own a condominium. I was exploring a remote beach wearing a set of well-worn sandals. Appropriate footwear? Not for me. I went flying off the coral rock and landed on my skull.

The result? A cut so deep I used my finger as a dipstick to measure it. I walked two miles back to my car, and then drove five miles to the condo. While I’m sure St. Croix has superb medical facilities, I opted to ask a neighbor to patch me up. She bandaged me with a white skullcap contraption that made me look as if I had just undergone a lobotomy.

My new head gear generated some prolonged stares at both the St. Croix and San Juan airports. Thankfully, I received no special scrutiny from airport security. I did, however, have some explaining to do when I saw my client, whom I was meeting in person for the first time. She kindly pretended not to notice my bandaged head, as if lunches with lobotomized marketing consultants were a part of her routine.

Scalp injuries are unpleasant. But nothing compares with the on-the-road dental emergency.

My upper right molar had been bothering me sporadically for months. The day before a business trip to Sacramento last August to attend the annual gathering of the American Chamber of Commerce Executives, the tooth started acting up again. This time, the pain kept me up most of the night. But rather than cancel the trip and go to my dentist, I made my flight the next morning. By the time we were making our descent into the San Francisco airport, I was in unbearable pain.

I managed to drive to Sacramento with a thick application of Orajel coating my tooth and gum. In the meantime, I contacted my client who found a dentist who would take my company’s dental insurance and give me a next-day appointment.

The root canal was a screaming success. Unfortunately, the tooth was infected, and the infection spread to my sinuses.

Having been suffused with antibiotics and codeine, I have only vague recollections of the conference. I believe I met some nice people from Spokane and Fort Worth. I’m pretty sure I had breakfast with the Sacramento client who led me to the dentist. I do remember a friend from Seattle, who was also a conference speaker, saying it wouldn’t be the first time someone had told him they would rather have a root canal than sit through one of his speeches.

Since August, I’ve been to Manchester, England; Savannah, Ga.; Miami; Puerto Rico; and back to Sacramento with four different antibiotics coursing through my veins. I still have the infection.

Sage advice from all this? Not really, except wear good shoes when you take a hike. And when your dentist says you don’t have to floss all your teeth — just the ones you want to keep — listen.

By Rob DeRocker, as told to Joan Raymond. E-mail: joan.raymond@nytimes.com

Rob DeRocker is an executive vice president at Development Counselors International, a marketing firm based in New York.

Lily: The Labrador-Sized Hole in Our Hearts

It was a year ago today that Melinda and I had to put down our beautiful yellow Labrador, Lily. Below is the message I sent to friends a few days after. It's been a sad year. We still haven't gone to retrieve her ashes:

All:

Please forgive the impersonal salutation. We’ve got sad news that we’d rather talk about with you personally, but we wanted to notify as many people as possible sooner rather than later. It concerns our beloved and beautiful 10 ½ year old yellow Labrador, Lily, whom we had to put down last Friday.

Some of you already know the story: Lily, a very athletic dog that even at 10 people called “puppy” as she trotted around Tarrytown, swam in the lakes and ran with me in the Rockefeller Nature Preserve, went in for a routine checkup about 10 days ago. The vet discovered a sizable mass in her hind quarters. He operated for a biopsy the next day. Last Friday the final lab report came in, showing an incredibly aggressive form of cancer that usually takes a dog within one or two months. For Lily it was much faster. In one week the disease spread through her body like a forest fire. Tumors that hadn’t been evident on Wednesday were consuming her belly on Thursday. On Friday morning she was in such pain she was crying even while lying down.

Now, only we are. We put her down around 1:30 that afternoon.

We’re grieving tremendously, more than I had even imagined as she got older and I would occasionally think of the inevitable day that arrives for animals that typically have one seventh the life span of their owners. To paraphrase a line from Jerry Maguire, this dog “had us at hello.” When we picked her from a litter of five puppies at a Brooklyn brownstone in 1996, all but one was scampering all over the yard. Lily came over and sat on my foot. “Uh, We’ll take that one,” we said, and thus began a relationship that had Melinda and me set up like bowling pins from day one. It got deeper and deeper with the passing years, and now suffice it to say there’s a Labrador-sized hole in our hearts.

Even as I write this I realize how melodramatic that may sound to some of you. We know that dogs are not people (even if couples with no children are especially inclined to treat them as such). We know that this dog had a fabulous 10 years, and that of the 3800 or so days that she was part of our family, only 7 of them were bad – a ratio we’d all welcome for ourselves. We know that even now, some of you on this distribution list are dealing with matters far more grievous than the loss of a Labrador. More important, we know that God, in His time, will not just heal this and far more profound pain, He will swallow it up, and in the “new heaven and new earth” make our everlasting joy even bigger because of it.

But painful it is right now, and for that, we ask for your prayers. I still have to make a living – pray that I can get through work days without falling apart.
Pray that Melinda can get through that time in the early evening before I get home that she and the pooch she called “my best girlfriend” would particularly bond. Pray that it would continue to draw us both closer together.

Friends, thanks for listening, and thanks for your prayers. We’ll be okay, all the faster with the concern of folks like you.

God bless.

Love,

Rob and Melinda
P.S. If you write back, don’t stop at condolences. Tell us what’s happening in your lives.