Mouth of Horrors

Here’s the quick re-cap of yesterday’s dental drama:

We never even got to the molar that has to be pulled. My front tooth was save-able but required a surprise (to everyone but me, because I have been conditioned to expect the worst at the dentist) root-canal and cap, and the tooth next to it was discovered to be a disaster area too, so she stripped that one away and put a temporary crown on it, too.

And because my front teeth are especially sensitive to pain, she had to poke me repeatedly, throughout the entire ordeal, with the Long Needle containing the most powerful novacaine known to modern dental science.

Oh, and she also had to do some impromptu gum surgery, leaving me feeling this morning like my gums survived an attack by a pack of angry wolverines, but just barely.

My mouth still tastes like a combination of blood and death and I’m on antibiotics for the next few days to ward off infection.

I’ll say this. My dentist is as good at her job as John Henry was at swinging a nine-pound hammer. Hmph. And the similarities don’t end there, but I’m sure I don’t need to draw you a picture on that one.

All told, I spent just under three and a half hours in her chair, tilted upside down, sending me home with a raging headache on top of everything else. They were vacuuming the office as she was finishing. The appointments she had following mine yesterday got rescheduled and for my return visit, they booked me for the last appointment of the day—at 2 p.m.

There is dentistry and then there is heroic dentistry. My dentist, at 4’11” and less than 100 pounds, practices super-heroic dentistry. She even “donated” a bunch of yesterday’s services because she knows I just lost one of my jobs a couple weeks ago and have already maxed-out the year’s dental insurance by this, the first week in March.

And when I expressed mortal fear at the prospect of having to come back to have the back tooth extracted, she recommended her dentist husband to me (some kind of Specialist who employs all manner of swell nerve-settling gasses) because she could make sure that he would be significantly cheaper than any of my other extreme-dentistry options.

Because as good as the idea sounds on days like yesterday, mid-procedure, I really don’t want to die of a self-inflicted drug overdose in the dentist’s chair.

So to sum up, I am cursed with the mouth a lifetime of stupid decisions has earned me, but blessed with a better, kinder, sweeter dentist than I will deserve if I live another ten lifetimes.

Hopefully, this will be my last teeth-related post for a while. You are now free to return to your consumption of carbonated beverages and crystal meth, but I really can’t recommend it. Even if your dentist wears a cape and flies to work without an airplane.