Dental Order is Restored

[ltmurnau]

The remaining swelling did not faze the Doc (or should I call him the Dent?) and we boogied at 8 am sharp. After 45 minutes he had drilled open the leaky filling on my 2-5 (left forward upper bicuspid), pulled out the old gutta-percha (whatever that is), drilled out the canal to a nice roundy circle instead of a flattish bacteria-admitting oblong, cleaned and restuffed it, and put in a temporary filling.

After a break he cut open my gum, sucked out all the putrid nastiness, did something to the top of my tooth, installed a cap to seal off the end, and sewed me up. He told me that the bacteria had been up there for a couple of years, eating away at the jawbone, so there was a big hole in the bone there now and the only reason why I had pain at this point was because there was nowhere else for the nasty stuff to go.

So, I am OK to travel to Phoenix and when I get back I will have the sutures out and a proper filling done. Then that should be it, until some ruffian punches me at that exact point and caves in my entire skull....

Comments

[scuttle.livejournal.com]

It is a good thing that you have your super-human pain tolerance.

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

If I didn't have that super-human pain tolerance, I would have run crying to Mr. Dentist a lot sooner than I did. But it does come in handy more often than not.

[emmabovary.livejournal.com]

Just reading your description of the procedure made my teeth ache.

Thanks tons.

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

That was peanuts compared to some of the other operations I had a few years ago... http://www.islandnet.com/~citizenx/news.html.

Funny, until recently I spent little or no time under the knife.

[emmabovary.livejournal.com]

Yes, well, I had already read your medical history so I was familiar with that story.

But nothing beats pitocin-induced labor with no epidural for bragging rights so I've got you there, buddy.

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

I definitely yield to you on that point. I was there for every moment of my wife's chemically induced labour and it was one of the most stressful days of my life. Not something I would want to go through myself! I read that a hormone (is it oxytocin?) secreted during labour has the effect of "flushing" short-term memory, so that the woman does not remember the pain as acutely. Something like this must be true, else no one would ever have more than one child.