Dental Suppuration

There is this pressure that won't let up. A dull, knocking throb deep in the jaw that feels as though something beneath the surface is simmering — because that is exactly what is happening. Pus is collecting in the tissue around your tooth, right where stability should be, where your bite is anchored, where you grasp. The gum swells, grows hot, becomes sensitive to pressure. Sometimes a fistula forms — a tiny channel through which the pus seeks its own way out — because the pressure has grown too great.

Dentistry describes this as a bacterial infection of the dental tissue. And that is true — on the biological level. But the question BodySignal asks goes deeper: why there? Why now? What in your inner life has come under such pressure that your body festers at exactly the place that stands for your grasping, your persistence, your rootedness in life?