Oral Surgery For The Win

46 almost 47 years ago two people had a baby. She was a colicky baby. She screamed and screamed and screamed at night. Sometimes they would get in the car and her father would drive around in his 57 Chevy, because the sound of the engine would soothe her to sleep. Of course, they weren't getting any sleep, but at least the screaming would stop.

Her mother would sit with her baby in her stroller, throughout the long nights, and gently rock the stroller back and forth with her foot, while playing solitaire, hoping the baby would fall asleep. Sometimes it would work. The father would stop by these late nights from his night job as a cabbie and bring egg rolls to her mother, a token payment for dark circles and exhaustion.

At some point, the baby decided she'd sleep if she had a bottle. By this I mean not that she would take a bottle and fall asleep after consuming it, but that if she was laying down with a bottle in her mouth and drinking on it, she'd fall asleep. This was a great solution for a baby who would not be comforted and for parents who desperately needed this child to sleep.

Until she grew her teeth.

Her teeth you see had been rotted by the pooling of milk that her mouth held at night from this bottle. Her baby teeth shattered and broke off. Her father had to hold her in the dentist chair and pieces of her broken teeth were removed. It was unpleasant. Her irrational and incredible fear of dentists was probably set in motion during those visits.

That baby is me.

Hard to believe I was a difficult baby I KNOW, but I apparently was. And it's no one's fault because who knew back then? Science wasn't what it is now. Hell my mother's baby book for me says that you shouldn't drink when pregnant because it's just too many calories and you don't want to put on weight and be unattractive. TIMES WERE DIFFERENT.

46 years later I'm still dealing with this crap though. I've had so many root canals. And now one of them has "gone bad". I went to the endodontist to see if they could "retreat" the root canal. NOPE. So my next option is? ORAL SURGEON.

I met a very nice man today who told me that if it all goes well, it'll be $184 dollars and they'll just pull the whole thing out. If it goes poorly, the root will shatter and they'll have to cut into my gum and stuff to get out the bits. Also, the tooth behind it had a root canal and they are SO closely packed together he's concerned pulling this one could shatter or knock that one loose - so loose that it has to come out.

I'm expecting the worst.

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