Why go to Yerevan when you can have dental surgery?

This past weekend was supposed to be a fun, exciting, much-anticipated trip to the capital of Armenia. David and I had planned for 2 weeks, we had gathered our passports, obtained the necessary visas, prepared the kids, alerted my son's school that he would be out on Friday. We were ready. Hotel reservations made. Car gassed up.

And then? And then my tooth, the one that has had not one, not two, but three root canals done to it started hurting again. Badly. So very, very badly. After the last root canal my dentist, a wonderful man named Gigi, told me that if the tooth was not better, I would have to have it surgically fixed. They would have to cut open my gums, drill out my jawbone, cut the roots inside the jaw, refill the jawbone with prosthetic material and sew me up. (For the record, the first root canal was done in Washington, DC and lasted a little less than 2 years before it started bugging me, the second was done in January of this year here in Georgia, right before we went on vacation, and the third was done by Gigi when I went to him for a second opinion after my first Georgian root canal didn't fix it.) I called Gigi and told him about the pain. About how I could not sleep. And his answer was "Come on Saturday at 3 and we will do the surgery".

So much for Armenia.

On Saturday at 2, I took a Xanax because Georgian dentists don't give you any gas to make you floaty and happy while they hammer away in your mouth. At 3 I was in the dentist's office being prepped for surgery. I had a lovely surgical cap with matching blue drape, a pair of snazzy amber glasses to protect my eyes from any splatter and to lessen the glare from the overhead lights. By 3:45 the surgery was done and I was on my way home with a mouth full of stitches.

I would have much rather gone to Armenia. Instead, I went here:

Yes, that is where my dentist's office is. See the purple door on the right side of the derelict-looking building? That's his space. And, you may find this hard to believe, but inside this building it is beautiful. And Gigi's offices are state-of-the-art. He has all the latest and greatest technology, from digital wireless xrays, to drills with fiber optic lights on the ends. Living proof that you never judge a book by it's cover.