Root canals hurt. The next day, that is. Now that the freezing has fled my mouth, the stabby feelings have moved in and are sporadically stomping about. The Motrin is providing about as much pain relief as a Tic Tac would.
All I've been able to eat are cooled-down poached eggs. Pair that with the fact that my brushing has been done rather gingerly to accommodate The Tooth Of Sauron, you can imagine how fantastic my breath is right now.
Honestly, it wasn't that bad. Getting my teeth scaled at the dentist is far more painful than this was.
The endodontist, Dr Golosky, rubbed the area with numbing gel, froze my gums with a needle (couldn't really feel it), dental dam'd me and went to work at a pretty quick pace. For the most part, it was like someone sticking push pins into the tooth (which I couldn't feel) and tapping and stirring them around. I was told by someone to expect a lot of crunching and scraping sounds, but it really wasn't that bad at all. He used one tool after the pin thing that made a slight crisping noise, but even that was ok. The procedure took about 1 hour and 15 minutes, but went by fairly quickly. Dr Golosky chatted about all the well-to-do engagement and wedding announcements he saw in the New York Times, which I guess is like reality TV for the more refined. He finished my tooth off with a thing that looked like a glue gun to pop some cement onto the tooth to seal it up (I have to go back to my regular dentist to get it more permanently filled and sealed) and then I was done and sent on my way, sadly, without a prescription for dependency-worthy drugs (I was told to go buy some Advil).
Hours later, I'm still frozen through the cheek and nose, although sensitivity is coming back and my mouth definitely knows something happened while it went down for a Dr Golosky-imposed nap.
We'll see how it goes in the next few hours.
You know how people say "I'd rather have a root canal"? Well, I'm about to see if it lives up to its horror in less than 30 minutes. Yup, I'm getting my tooth opened up, the pulp scraped out and some pins driven through the roots. It's a beautiful way to start the week.
I'll update when I get back.
Guess who gets to have a root canal?
Yeehaw - it's me! That cavity I had filled back in the fall has come back from the dead and is haunting my tooth via sensitivity to all things hot, which is annoying seeing as I like to cook my food. My dentist is arranging for a specialist to do it. I assume this is because mine might be 'difficult'. Excellent.
Naturally, when I heard "root canal" I went straight to the source - Google Images. Anyone else curious as to what a root canal entails might want to click. These images not only showed me the horror of this procedure but also taught me that dental dams are actually dental-related and not just a universally ignored tool for safe sex.
Because I have to go to a specialist means that I'm going to have to fork over some of my own money. It got me thinking that perhaps it's time to consider investing a little into my smile. Seeing as I'm willing to pay money to have someone drill into my tooth and scrape its pulp out, why not spend a bit of cash on something nice? Obviously, I'd need a consultation and stuff first, 
but I'm looking into straightening my teeth and getting them whitened.
I'm particularly interested in seeing if I could get Invisalign. It's this clear mold of your teeth that gradually pressure them (you get new molds every two weeks) into the proper position. Totally expensive, but they sure look better than the traditional traintrack method.
My vanity knows no bounds.
This morning Patrick got his wisdom teeth yanked out. I stayed home from work in order to flag a cab for him home, tuck him in and make him soup. At least, that was the vision.
Instead, I got him home and he popped the wonderful prescription painkiller, Percocet, and has been a spazzy, happy clam all day. To my complete annoyance.
You see, I’m still sitting here working (on my cell and using e-mail) just as much as I would if I were in the office. The difference is that I have Sir Giggles McChatty beside me.
He’s been eating melted cheese and ice cream while playing the clip from Family Guy where Brian dons a banana suit and does the ‘Peanut Butter Jelly Time’ dance/song over and over again. Furthermore, Patrick was watching a documentary on the Iraq War. I find that annoying in itself, but even more - in this film, someone sings a particular Islamic song that Patrick has noted (quite accurately, I’m afraid) sounds a lot like Rhinestone Cowboy. Rhinestone Cowboy is a song that people know the title verse to only, so when they get the song in their head – as Patrick has – all they do is repeat “Like a rhinestone cowboy .. dun dun” over and over and over again.
This is going on as I’m on the phone to the client talking about the looming deadline for a product launch.
"Peanut Butter Jelly! Peanut Butter Jelly! Peanut Butter Jelly With a Baseball Bat! Like a Rhinestone Cowboy – dun dun …. Like a rhinestone cowboy …"
Kill me now. Or at least give me one of those magical pills.
I just came back from the dentist. At the age of 26, I had my very first cavity filled in today. I then got the last of my scaling (see: horrible gum gouging) done.
This is awful to admit: This July was the first time I've been to the dentist in approximately 6 years. I don't know what I was thinking. Ok, well, I do. For the longest time I didn't have any dental coverage (interning, probationary term at work, getting laid off from said work, freelance/temp work, another probationary term at work), so I completely fell out of the dental loop. Then I just got lazy. And then I got all scaredy about what they might find.
Thankfully, I'm a brusher and a flosser, so my teeth and gums were in decent condition. However, he found a cavity buried between a couple teeth. This bad boy apparently had been nestling in for a few years and felt so at home that it had probably been wandering around in its fat-pants and drinking juice straight from the carton.
In other words, my cavity was DEEP. Like, close to the nerve and gums deep (it was a "two-pronged" cavity - way to multitask, decay!). The dentist said there was a decent chance that in the future (anything between a couple weeks to a couple years) that I may have trouble and would need a root canal and perhaps some gum work around the tooth where that cavity was. Gross.
The spaz in me immediately went to Google images to see just what a root canal 
entailed. The results were horrifying. The point of this post is that THIS COULD BE YOU if you don't go to your dentist regularly and get things nipped in the bud:
My name is Jen and I look like that picture at all times. I enjoy appetizers as entrees, fountains choreographed to music and television shows intended for teenage girls. Oh - and I really dislike it when people spell it "Jenn"; it's practically a phobia.
(the book)
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