Root Canals, Boxing, and Tumors

Little did I know that getting hit in the face while sparring in Boston would eventually lead to a gorgeous, ebullient dentist saving my life in Austin. Sometimes you're just lucky...

This is one of my favorite stories because there is no need for the casual embellishment that others typically blame me of employing.

I had gone my entire life without a single cavity after wearing braces for much of high school, having three wisdom teeth removed while serving in the Marine Corps, and maintaining a rather healthy schedule of visits to dentists for cleanings and treatments. My teeth and mouth, despite their proclivities for sweets and other delicacies, were relatively pristine.

But that all changed in 2011 when I woke up one Brookline (MA) morning with an inflamed cheek and excruciating pain in my upper left jawbone. My handsome face was—momentarily—grotesque and to the dentist I ran.

She was an adorable, older Greek woman whose office was replete with paintings of picturesque Aegean Sea islands. I have always preferred female dentists; there is something rather revolting about another man putting his fingers into my mouth regardless of professionalism and gloves.

I had a root canal. She was able to save the tooth and perform the essential repairs. I was going to survive. And the swelling would go down soon after the medication took effect.

That’s what she said.

Flash forward two years. I was training at former heavyweight champion John Ruiz’s boxing gym in Medford (MA) preparing for the Haymakers for Hope charity event. My bout would take place at The House of Blues in Boston on May 16.

Dan Parks was my coach. He pushed me to limits I had never experienced before in any athletic endeavor, then took me further. The fight was set for three two-minute rounds and Dan knew those six minutes would be an eternity for an amateur.

At some point in the months leading up to the fight I thought it would be a good idea to spar with a young man in his twenties who outweighed me by seventy pounds. It’s not that I was getting cocky about my skills in the ring or about my threshold for masochism; I figured that it would be wise to get an ass-kicking by a superior opponent to prepare me for the potential of an ass-kicking by a well-matched opponent.

The bell rang and we tapped gloves. Two minutes, two times.

I can survive four minutes against this behemoth with movement, jabs, feints, and guile. I can do this.

And for the first thirty seconds or so I was floating like a butterfly without stinging like a bee. Flicked jabs touched my sparring partner’s chest, shoulders, and occasionally his headgear. I ducked under a couple of his flurries and used some crafty footwork to escape the danger.

I felt like a professional!

Despite months of Dan teaching me to not leave my jab “out there,” however, I made that rookie mistake once again. Technical boxing is a lot different than a drunken pub brawl or a melee on the football pitch. One can get away with mistakes in those latter situations.

There is nowhere to hide in boxing.

This kid hit me in the mouth with a right hook that I still feel a decade later and the only solace and pride I retain now is that I did not hit the canvas. I didn’t go down.

But I did go sideways. I went sideways into the ropes with such force that I bounced back to the middle of the ring. By the time I got there my ears were ringing, my eyes were watering, and I was seeing stars. My opponent stood there and dropped his guard as the bell rang to signal the end of the round. There would not be a second one.

The memory of this moment remains fresh. I recall shaking my head a little to gain composure and trying to grin as I exited the ring to have Dan remove my gloves and headgear. It was an act. I got rocked. And whatever glory I could muster in the knowledge that I hadn’t gone down was tempered by my sparring partner’s concern for my well-being. He was actually afraid that he had injured me, so good was that punch. That hurt even more.

I attempted to spit out my mouthpiece but it was not easily dislodged; a tooth fragment had become embedded into the polyethylene-polyvinylacetate copolymer. It was the same tooth that had inspired the root canal two years earlier.

My opponent in Haymakers for Hope was a nice guy named Joe Panepinto (black tank top above). I lost by decision. He whipped me in the first round, won the second round by a narrow margin, then I won the third. Had the fight been four rounds, I might have emerged victorious, but it was a fair contest and Joe was an admirable, clean boxer.

There were 1,800 people at House of Blues screaming and yelling, including some of my closest friends. My amateur record still stands at 0-1. My street record is far superior.

Combined with the other fighters on the night’s card, we raised over $250,000 to fight cancer. That was the true victory for everyone.

And I now had a loose tooth in the upper left part of my mouth that caused bleeding from the gums whenever I ate or brushed my teeth. Like most men, especially Marines, I just thought it would heal itself. I’m a self-anointed tough guy, after all.

I was not about to rush off to my dentist in Brookline again because of a minor annoyance. The issue would just go away eventually.

And it did. The tooth felt a little loose at times, but the bleeding stopped and I resumed all oral activities. All of them.

Flash forward to September 2015. I returned to Austin (TX) to take a job, resume playing soccer for Thunder FC, and extract myself (finally) from a disastrous relationship. It was time. My life in Massachusetts and elsewhere had come to standstills as friends moved away or passed away. Boston was transforming itself into what the brilliant writer April Leavenworth described—with melancholy—as “an amusement park.”

Legendary pubs like Doyle’s Cafe and restaurants like The No Name had closed. Gone were the days of walking the tree and statue-lined path of Commonwealth Avenue in the Back Bay and recognizing faces. The transition happened too quickly for the proper nostalgia to be captured.

But similar changes had taken place in Austin. Gone (there) were the days of being able to park one’s car downtown in the same spot for weeks without getting a ticket or being towed and of recognizing familiar faces. The allure of the small-town feel in the 1990s had been replaced by an invasion of whiny tech assholes from California who had escaped from overcrowding, crime, and gentrification to overzealously create the same three factors in a new place.

And I had to find a new dentist.

I used the Google to search for dentists in Buda, Texas, so I could find a place close to my new office on Main Street.

And there it was: Buda Dental Professionals, three short blocks away.

So I took a stroll at lunch, entered the building, and introduced myself to the receptionist.

“I’m a veteran and dental isn’t covered by the VA until I’m 75, an age that I’m not planning to make, so I’ll be paying out of pocket.”

The sweet lady told me there were two dentists at the office and pointed to the framed photographs on the wall behind her.

There was Dr. Taylor: he appeared to be 974 years old.

And there was Dr. Strickland: she appeared to be a supermodel in her thirties.

With my worst-ever poker face, I uttered “I think I’ll go with Dr. Strickland.”

The receptionist rolled her eyes. She had anticipated my slithering response.

“I need the full work-up for a new patient. And I think I have a loose tooth.”

The appointment was made.

I knew there was going to be a problem when the hygienist softly said “Ugh” under her mask and breath. She barely had the pick and mirror inside of my mouth for a few seconds, but now she had to summon my new dentist for an evaluation.

Dr. Ashley Sorenson Strickland entered the examination room. My first thought was to thank Christ that the office displayed photographs of both dentists in public view near the waiting area. It’s not that the now-retired Dr. Taylor wasn’t handsome in a grandfatherly sort of way. It’s just that there was really only one clear choice from which to hear the command “Open wider.”

Her degrees of professionalism and tactfulness were annoying. I knew better than to flirt with her like she was a server at TGI Friday’s during happy hour. Not that I have ever been to a happy hour at a TGI Friday’s; I was just imagining the comparative horror.

After one look into my mouth, Dr. Strickland recoiled back on her rolling chair.

“Your tooth is in about six pieces. I don’t even have the skills to remove it. I need to refer you to someone else.”

This was not the start to the beautiful relationship I had eagerly anticipated. Her wedding ring didn’t help, either, nor did her friendly personality that immediately established a concerned cousin vibe as opposed to that of a wayward, sultry step-aunt.

I actually liked Dr. Strickland as a person and not as a fantasy object. It was a mild disappointment.

Shortly thereafter, a call was made from the receptionist and directions were provided: I was to proceed to a local periodontist. Stat.

I felt a bit scolded by Dr. Strickland, but I still managed to keep myself together. I’ll show her!

My drive to the second office took about twenty minutes. I can’t remember what songs I was listening to at the time. I wish I did now.

The periodontist pulled the mangled tooth in a matter of seconds and performed a quick examination of my mouth.

“Have you noticed this lump under your tongue?” he asked.

I paused.

“Yes. I feel it sometimes after I eat spicy foods, but otherwise I never really notice it,” was my response.

He took off his glasses.

“Well, if you were my brother, I would tell you to go straight to an oral surgeon for an MRI. Would you like a referral?”

Hot dentist. Probing periodontist. And now an oral surgeon. All within a matter of hours.

This had to be some sort of orchestrated scam because I was paying cash!

The oral surgeon’s office was across the street. I walked there. And, after filling out some forms and releases, I was absorbing the hums and cranks of an MRI machine.

Remember this: my initial intent was for a simple cleaning.

I received the results within a few days: tumors in my neck, under my tongue, and in my nasal passages.

All three doctors had my records and tests from that morning’s adventure sent to the VA in Austin and, after a brief phone interview, I was approved for surgery within a week.

I greatly underestimated the severity of the six-hour surgery. My thought was that I would be back at work the next day with some mild pain, but that was not to be the case.

A week was spent in bed with silicon inserts in my nasal passages and a blood drip attached to my neck. Though it was the middle of a violently hot Texas summer, the pain pills created teeth-chattering chills that forced me to drive myself to a local emergency room. Twice. (That’s the last time I have taken a pain pill!)

I also think I shit my pants twice. Good times.

There have been many great victories—and defeats—throughout the course of my life, but one of the more significant for the former was the moment I returned to the surgeon to have those inserts removed from my nose. The extraction produced a horror show of disgusting elements that I will not soon forget. Fresh air, too.

And so it was that getting hit in the face and having a tooth loosened in the process led to the discovery of a lump under my tongue and the surgery that most likely prolonged my existence.

My scans have all been negative during the past seven years. My voice changed a bit after surgery: more slurring when fatigued, more lispy due to the surgical damage. But I am alive. I am not merely surviving, but thriving.

I consider Dr. Strickland a dear friend, albeit only through social media messaging now. She married her high school sweetheart (he was the football star, she was the cheerleader) and they have a beautiful, healthy family together. We eventually got to a point of such comfort and hilarity in my office visits that I could coyly ask her things like “Can we do it without gloves this time, Doc?”

She would just laugh and say “Oh, George, you’re so funny!”

We might never meet in person again and that is fine.

You can all blame her for saving my life, too.