The strangeness of events that happen to me extend even to the medical realm. I was going to this dentist that I really wasn’t a fan of, but he was on our insurance, and I was in high school, so I was in that “whatever” phase. He filled a cavity for me...
[wait, wait—total side note—is it my Irishness or something that makes me have the WORST teeth in the world? I mean, I brush. I may not floss every day, but I floss. I use mouthwash. And my teeth are practically falling out of my head! Ugh!]
...and the cavity never stopped hurting. In fact, it got a bit worse. I went to him and he was all, “just give it a bit more time, let me check it...yeah, it’s fine.” And I couldn’t eat on that side of my mouth for months. I was getting really into tepid foods because those were the only things that didn’t pain me. So I ended up going back, and to my great luck, he wasn’t in the office that day. I got to see his dental hire, this girl straight out of dental school who was working with him for the time being before going back for a specialty. So she sees me, and takes me seriously. No writing me off. No acting like I don’t know when my own tooth hurts.
She decided to open up the cavity and see what was going on. She warned me that there was a chance that she would open it up and then I’d have to come back for a root canal, but thought that more likely I would just end up having to get it refilled. So fine. I am sitting in the chair, all prone and slack-jawed. She is talking to me about something or other (which I HATE! Why do dentists do that to you?? Just to show the power they have over you? You can’t answer! You can’t even really nod! You have to just sit there and listen to whatever they feel like telling you and can’t talk back. Ugh!), and all of a sudden she starts yelling “HOT TOOTH! I GOT A HOT TOOTH IN HERE!”
I could do little more than widen my eyes and go “uht? UHT? Ot oot?” The dental assistant came rushing in, and as I had the spit sucker and multiple hands in my mouth, they let me know that my “hot tooth” meant I had to get the root canal immediately. They were rushing around prepping and frankly, it was making me a bit nervous.
(In case you are hoping for further information on the term “hot tooth,” I have done you the favor of pasting below the following paragraph from www.doctorspiller.com/root_canals:
“On the other hand, some people present with what we call a hot tooth. A hot tooth is one in which the nerve is alive, but badly inflamed. The tooth is generally already very painful [mine was!], especially to hot or cold stimuli [yes! YES!]. These are the ones that require multiple shots to get numb enough to work on painlessly. A vast majority of these will numb out with a few carpules of anesthesia administered in the normal ways. A few, however, are so inflamed and acidic that the anesthesia cannot diffuse into the nerve fibers well enough to totally destroy the sensations generated by the nerve in the tooth. In these cases, we may resort to intrapulpal anesthesia. In this procedure, we will drill very quickly directly though the top of the tooth into the nerve chamber (a few seconds is generally sufficient time) and deliver a quick squirt of anesthesia directly into the nerve inside the tooth [oh, we are so getting to this part and what THAT feels like in a few seconds]. It's fast, and always effective.”)
So back to me (isn’t that what blogging is all about?), I am sitting there dreading the whole procedure. I had never had a root canal before, but the things I heard weren’t really fabulous. So as they start setting up for this sudden, immediate root canal, I can do nothing but stare over to the painting of a sailboat on the far wall. I believe I still hate paintings of sailboats because they are ALWAYS in dentists’ offices. At least, my dentists had them. Perhaps they are supposed to be calming? Like the “lite fm” music that they always play. Because really, how can you not just relax and open wide when you hear Celine Dion?
The doctor (I have no idea of her name, hence the “doctor” and “she” business) then lets me know that what she has to do is directly inject the Novocain into the root itself, in order to do the root canal. I had some other Novocain that day and the aforementioned terrible tooth history, so I felt like it would just be more of the same.
Well. Not so much. I am a pretty quiet person; I think I go with the flow. She stuck that needle into the root of my tooth and I vocally protested, used one hand to grip the arm of the chair with a force that probably would have broken a bone, and flailed my free arm for about 3 solid seconds. Which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it really is. It was excruciating. And perhaps because this came before all that other crap I had to have, like getting all 4 impacted wisdom teeth out at the same time, this stands out as the SINGLE most painful dental experience of my life.
But then, I guess looking on the bright side (as I am so inclined to always do), after that 3 seconds of torturous pain, I had absolutely no further pain for the rest of the procedure. She did whatever had to be done, and I felt nothing. I practically dozed off.
And then that doctor decided that what she was going back to school for her as a specialty was root canals! So I’d like to think that my “hot tooth” kind of played a role in shaping her future.
