The Genetics of Compassion

Genetics can be tough. One look at both my parents’ dental history reveals I had zero chances of inheriting strong teeth. A winning smile, sure, but quality, cavity-resistant chompers were out of the question. This is why, by the time I graduated college, I’d lost count of the number of fillings I had endured (over twenty).   I can tell you I had precisely two root canals because they involve the most intensive drilling, complete removal of the pulp of the tooth, and two additional appointments to reconstruct and crown your sad shell of a tooth.  And while you might imagine that the aggregated hours, ney weeks, I’ve spent underneath fluorescent lights with latex fingers and a suction in my mouth have made me into a steely veteran, the opposite has been true.  I’m sorry to say that experience has left me more traumatized than heroic.

So it was with sudden panic that I woke one morning to a throbbing toothache.  For two days I traded terror for denial, hoping I was hallucinating or misreading a deferred headache, until the persistent reality of pain won over and I started asking around for a good dental referral.  Our receptionist swore by a dentist she had been seeing for over twenty years down in lower Manhattan, whose name….wait for it… was Dr. Thor.  The idea of a hammer-wielding dentist was utterly terrifying, but , I reasoned further, should he be played by Chris Hemsworth I would comply.  When I arrived to my appointment I learned that Dr. Thor is actually a woman, which is also just fine when you consider the repulsive gargling and spitting these scenarios require.

They x-rayed the troubled area and almost immediately declared, in no uncertain terms, this is the mother of all cavities, the harrowing run if you still can, root canal.  “But I’m a really avid brusher,” I protested. Dr. Thor gave me a sympathetic smile. “Yes, but this cavity formed beneath a filling you had years ago. It’s not a surface level decay, but probably just the result of time passing and space growing between your old filling and the rest of the tooth.” It takes a moment to process. My fillings need fillings. Dear God.  Cheated does not begin to cover how I feel about this diagnosis.  I‘ve been cheated yet again by my biology, which is the absolute worst, because nature is the most impartial arbiter of fate; No amount of rage or reason or door-slamming will alter its course.

I stifle my sniffles as the dental receptionist processes my bill, hoping she doesn’t see what a big baby I am.  After a bit of clicking around she discreetly slides the itemized bill across the desk. Apparently these are not figures one speaks aloud. And as I quickly tally the expenses of each part of this procedure I feel, for perhaps the first time in my dental history, the horror that I will be held personally responsibly for financing this nightmare. Hitherto, I have been young enough to be included under my parents’ dental coverage.  But those golden years have passed and now my employer doesn’t offer anything but a joke of a reimbursement package, in which they pay a pittance of a percent of the thing six months, three phone calls, and two “lost” fax attempts later. If you’re lucky. And persistent.

The mental algebra continues as I scan the bill and I see my entire savings—that puny but proud pile I’ve been dutifully stacking against the economic trappings of Manhattan living for the past two years—vanish before me. Gone with it is the promise of future travel or ballroom dance lessons or one of the five wedding invitations adorning my refrigerator. The circumference of my life is rapidly contracting before my eyes. Big alligator tears begin splattering across the paperwork and noticing my distress, the receptionist moves in with the minimal patient counseling training she must have received the first day on the job. 

“Yeah, I know it can feel like a lot,” she concedes, “but New York has so many free events in the summer.  Try NYC.Go.  They have lots of outdoor options. And you should take in some sun—it makes everyone happier!”

Yes, of course, why didn’t I think of that fool-proof solution earlier: sunshine. Sunshine and $3000 would make all my problems go away. I cry harder and the receptionist realizes she has drifted with me far past the safe harbor of mere financial planning into the uncertain waters of total existential despair.  While I am mostly just a blubbering mess, I am dimly aware that we have entered the Bermuda triangle of dental encounters.  On one side of this perfect storm is the childhood dread of shrill, grinding oral trauma, a punishment Dante neglected to chart in his description of the 9^th layer of hell.  The second dimension of the storm, as mentioned, is the depletion of my savings and then some.  It is actually clear now that all the moneys in my bank account will not suffice and that I will likely be charging groceries for the next six months. But the real rip tide is far deeper than my deckhand, the receptionist, can fathom. It is the sudden realization that despite the fact that I have moved across the country, graduated from Harvard, secured full time work in an honorable, however unprofitable profession, and have generally been holding it down like a grown ass woman, I am, at the end of this appointment, reduced to a poorly-covered, cavity-ridden, hot mess.  Here marks the remains of my brilliant self-image and the illusion of adult autonomy. Sail no further.

The receptionist, now completely vexed by my emotional deluge, hands me a tissue and says: “I’ll pray for you.” 

I’m not sure what is more uncomfortable- how earnestly she bestowed the blessing or how sadly I needed it.

I burst through the doors of the dentist’s office, into the light of day and past a jostling tide of suits as my phone begins to ring.

“Hi, mom,” I answer verbosely.  (My mom only needs one syllable to recognize my precise level of pain.)

“Oh no, that bad, huh?” she replies.

And so, still blubbering, I narrate all the coordinates of my Bermuda Triangle of existential despair.

“Maggi, Maggi, Maggi,” she soothes, “Do you know that I made this exact same phone call to my Dad when I was your age?  I had a catastrophic dental problem that I couldn’t figure out how to pay for and do you know what he said to me?”

I picture my grandpa: father and provider to ten children, cunning NYPD detective turned hustling California realtor, and the likely benefactor of my family’s long legs and soft Irish teeth. The kind of teeth whose cavities have cavities.

“He said, “Ahh Mary, don’t you worry. I’ve got a deal closing soon and we’ll make it happen. You don’t have to do this by yourself.”  And do you know what Maggi,” my mom continued, “I also have a deal closing this month. So you don’t need to worry. We’ll make it happen.”

I wasn’t looking for a handout. In fact, the depth of my despair was based on the firmly entrenched assumption that I needed to resolve this financial hurdle as an independent adult person. Turning to my mom for help felt so age inappropriate, so desperate, so unlike the image of self-sovereignty I carefully guarded.

How often is it that the arbitrarily constructed image of how we ought to be robs us of the adaptability to find peace with the way things are?  That preoccupation with who I ought to be also occluded the fact that my story is far from exceptional. So many working adults have lousy, if any, dental coverage and are forced to pay out of pocket for treatment. Friends tell me that they have stayed on antibiotics for months to treat the infection and reduce the painful swelling of root canals while they save up to adequately fix the problem.  University dental clinics, while offering reduced rates of service, have waitlists so long and appointments so limited that what begins as a three-week ordeal turns to a six-month operation. Although my trip to the dentist was subjectively traumatic on multiple levels, it is clear that exorbitant dental costs and poor coverage is not a problem particular to my life, but symptomatic of a larger national issue.

But what I have also gleaned from this dental trauma is that while genetics are tough, the people they fashion together are stronger.  In other words, I didn’t just inherit bad teeth, but was born into multiple generations of understanding, people who intimately know the brute pain, and complex existential panic that surfaces in the face of a dental emergency. Compassion, borne of identical suffering, is an inheritable trait. And if we choose to accept it, in place of say self-sufficient egoism, it can quell most any storm.   

Afterward: When I first started writing this piece, I was thinking about the genetics of compassion in a non-literal sense, as a character trait that could be passed on, not through DNA, but by example.  There was a little bit of poetry in the idea, of course, that a family line (grandpa, mother, daughter) could experience heightened compassion precisely because of similar experiences with a medical condition that is literally genetic.  Then I read David Shenk’s, The Genius In All of Us, which tracks fascinating studies that suggest how, through our habits and practices, we are actively re-wiring our epigenetic material for our progeny. Knowing only a small bit about these scientific theories, I won’t attempt to unpack the details myself. I will, however, say I told you so when the world comes to recognize the important of habit in shaping us, down to a molecular level, and how things like compassion may indeed be inherited through exposure and blood.