The Much Needed Oral Surgery

I have to say that the science of dentistry isn't what it was even ten years ago. Things are so much better and different it's amazing. I got a root canal and a crown ten years ago and some time between now and then I got an infection in the root. I never really felt it, but it showed up on my x-ray and my dentist told me last year that it HAD to come out. It was apparently degrading the bone. Well, turns out over his past year, I could TELL that the tissue under the tooth was soft and things weren't as they should be so this year I decided it had to be done.

It wasn't that bad. I got the gas and this time they increased it more after I told them that last time I felt like I was in the grips of a total panic attack in a place with 10X the gravity of earth, which was undesirable. They gave me a bit more and I admit, I did feel more relaxed. Not the "loopy" you see on TV but just calm.

After they turned my jaw to stone with the little torture pinches of numbing, they put a big old rubber thing on one side of my mouth mouth between my teeth and he went to work.

Oddly, it was pretty fast. Previously upon extraction there was yanking and pulling and an epic use of force that was pretty painful even when numb. This guy said that he felt like if he used a little finesse I'd stay comfortable and he did just that. He actually gently rocked and wigged the tooth, then pulled, then repeated. I knew it was going well when he said "AHHH I GOT IT" and right about that time a terrible smell washed over me.

I'd describe it as burning death. I don't know what else to call it. He'd gone to work in my mouth doing something I couldn't define, then I realized he'd gotten the crown off and was getting the tooth. He mumbled about infection, ah that's the smell, and asked if I was still ok. I said I was, or sort of gurgled that I was as I couldn't move my mouth because of the block in my right teeth.

At this point he says, "I'm going to go in and cut out this infection, raise your hand if you feel anything" and goes into my mouth with what looks like scissors and a scythe, a tiny tiny scythe.

The sound was the worst. Crunching, bonking into bone, bonk bonk bonk that resonated into my head. Eventually it started to feel like he was dislodging my jaw, as he kept mumbling about cleaning, and needing this or that. Then they squirt some blue stuff at it and say "ok we got it" and take the block out from between my teeth and we're "done".

The dental assistant told Scott I needed a frosty, ha, and it sounded like a good idea. However, eating a frosty while you have a mouth with huge gauze filling with blood is less than ideal. In fact, it's not actually pleasant. The gauze gets soaked with both frosty and blood because you can't control your numb head.

The pain crept up slowly and stealthily like they said it would and settled into a roar from my jaw to the center of my head. I have two kinds of meds for pain and I'm employing them both.

Mostly I feel exhausted and tired, I'd say it's from the drugs (maybe) but I also feel like the mental stress of the whole thing was really taxing.

I asked them to let me see the tooth, the root broke as he pulled it out, but just into two pieces which pulled out fine, it didn't actually look bad. What did was the gobs of infection he pulled out which he also showed me, and omg what a horror show that this was IN my mouth. I just feel disgusting, how can that nasty mess have been inside me and I didn't realize it. I told my husband maybe I won't have horrible morning breath now, but he seems to think this wasn't it as it was contained.

A girl can dream.

I'm glad it's over.

Next up, a couple of root canals. Yippee yi yay yay.
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