To someone not in the health care industry, Surgery is a kind of bogeyman word. Any mention of it, conjurs up all sorts of nasty preconceptions about whats going to happen. And frequently, what is just a minor procedure can completely be blown out of the water, by misconcieved notions and rumor.
Yesterday I had an appointment with a Dental specialist over a possible problem with a tooth that's being involved in a bridge. My normal dentist was worried about what an X-ray might or might not have shown and wanted me to visit the other, before proceeding on sealing up the bridge work, again. The specialist proceeded to check me out and pronounced that tooth fine. However he had found the problem that was causing the blip on the X-ray. It seems, that the fron tooth of the bridge had developed a small cyst at the root, and was causing some gum distortions.
Since the tooth in question had previously been root canalled, the normal procedure would to just retreat it with another root canal, clean out the cyst and use anti-biotics. In this case however, the tooth in question was fragile, and had a post inserted to shore it up. Because it was so fragile, the specialist deemed it ill advised to remove the post, which might destroy the tooth. Instead he advised a "minor surgical" procedure, where he'd cut into the gum's above the tooth, a do a kind of reverse root canal from the roots of the tooth on down, and then stitch the gumline back close.
The procedure itself is relatively straight forward, and will most likely be even less painfull then a root canal. However, since I'm not in the medicial profession, Surgery has always been something to dread and avoid. Admittedly I'm also ferverent about my teeth with all the problems I have with them, and thus have allready scheduled an apointment for the procedure, but the very thought of Surgery brought up this bogeyman spector.
Since it's late however, and it has been a long day, I'll leave you with this and touch back on the subject Friday. Why, are we, as a human race anthamine to the notion that cutting into the body in order to correct something that could otherwise not be reached or treated?