A Trip to the Oral Surgeon

As I was saying last night, before I was so rudely interrupted by pain-killer sickness . . .

Two-and-a-half weeks ago I went to the dentist for the first time in about seven years. This is not because I am so terrified of the dentist that I avoided going until my mouth was falling apart. Actually it was lack of insurance and the tremendous cost of dentistry that kept me away, but the result was the same.

A few years ago my back left tooth broke. Seriously—a chunk the size of one of my kids' baby teeth broke off. I was pretty stressed out about it at first, but it never hurt, and I mostly didn't think about it after a while.

Then, during my last semester in school, my lower left gum got a black spot ("It's the black spot!") and a big, old boil on it, and my third tooth got kind of wiggly. I was pretty sure this meant an abscess, so I looked it up online—even found pictures that looked just like what I had—and yes, I was right. This wasn't terribly surprising, because that tooth has given me trouble since before I had my braces, and has had three surgeries during it's little life. But I couldn't get it fixed yet.

So I had Bruce give me a blessing and I did a few things I knew from having my jaw surgery way back when, and hoped nothing terrible would happen. After a while the blister popped (while I was brushing my teeth) and a bunch of goo leaked out. This happened every other day for a couple of weeks, until the bubble just went away, my gums looked mostly normal, and the tooth mostly stopped wiggling. Which was good, because I was in the middle of my fashion-show craziness, and didn't have the time or money to deal with it just then.

So the green arrows point to the little wires that held my jaw in place after my jaw surgery (when I was 16). I drew black outlines around the teeth on the left side to make it easier to see where all the happiness was taking place. You can see that the naughty, bad tooth has never had a normal root like the others. The tiny white spot on the bottom of that tooth is where I had two "root canals" done. (Actually the dentist says that tooth never had a root canal—which makes sense since that tooth has no root to speak of. But after my second surgery on it I got a T-shirt that said "I survived root canal surgery!" So it must have been a similar procedure.)

Well now we have some insurance—a "health savings account" actually. So I finally went to the dentist. Yay! I told him that I had a slightly wiggly tooth, he looked at my x-ray and said, "I bet I know which one." Yes, I had an abscess and some infection in there. But before we dealt with that he wanted to put a filling in the broken tooth. So two weeks ago, Wednesday, they shot me up with ten shots of novacaine and not only filled that tooth, but built it up so it doesn't look broken any more. Coming off of the novacaine was miserable. (I've decided that since I never have any drugs stronger than two over-the-counter ibuprofen in my system (and even that's not very often), my body just can't handle anything stronger.)

For two weeks I had a low-level ache in my head and jaw that gradually dwindled as time passed. The dentist looked at that tooth again yesterday, and it turns out the new bit needed to be ground down a little so my bite would work right.

After that was done, I went in to the oral surgeon where I would be put to sleep and have my naughty, bad, abscessed tooth removed and my mouth prepared for an implant. Again, I'm not scared of that kind of thing, but I am scared of getting a needle stuck in me–which was the very first thing they did; they gave me an I.V. to deliver the sleep-inducing drugs. I was a very good girl, and did not cry, or wriggle or anything. They said I'd feel drowsy in about 40 seconds, and I guess they were right because the next thing I remember was my father-in-law helping me into his car. (After he took me home he picked up my prescriptions and brought me some flowers too. :-) )

These are not my flowers because my camera is still missing; but they are like my flowers.

The worst of it all was coming off of the drugs and being on the pain-killers yesterday. Severe dizziness and nausea every time I tried to stand or sit up! That, and being super hungry (which increased the dizziness and nausea). Today my mouth hardly knows anything different happened (except my tongue can feel there's an empty spot that hasn't been there since I was twelve), so I will avoid the pain medicine like the plague that it is. And in a few months I will go back for a crown and my teeth will be better than they have in a while.

Hooray for modern dentistry!