About 3 or so years ago, I chipped a tooth. It didn't hurt much, after the initial incident, so I figured it could wait. After all, I didn't have dental insurance at the time. Yeah. Time to wait.
Fast forward about a year and a half. The pain grew, and now I had insurance, only they didn't cover major work until after a year of coverage. Would this constitute major work? Heck if I know. Cause you know what? I didn't ask. Instead, I opted to wait.
Sometime after that I ended up switching jobs, which meant I switched dental insurance again. You'd think I would know the drill by now, wouldn't you?
Fast forward again. After getting a cleaning, the prognosis is a root canal, and a filling in the tooth next to it. Here's the problem. For the root canal, the insurance required 100% of the payment up front. That was more unnerving than the procedure. Now, if I had the means for that, I might have gotten this taken care of years ago. No way was I fast forwarding again though.
I took the antibodies, and held off on filling the pain prescription. Here's how that conversation went.
"Do you need pain pills?"
"I don't know. If it keeps getting worse, then probably."
"I'll go ahead and write you a prescription for them. Just take them if you need them."
"Sure thing. And if I don't need them, I can get $5 a pill on the street, right?"
Okay. I made that last bit up.
Instead of getting the root canal in a week, it ended up being more like three weeks. By the end, I'd run out of the antibodies, and started taking the pain pills. No favors for me there. Haven't had any since somewhere around 3:00 am Tuesday morning. They tore up my stomach. Vomiting, constipation, cramps, and those are just the upsides. Even today, I can barely eat from whatever that did to my insides.
To complicate matters, I started putting heat on the mouth. It felt better. Apparently, that's the worse thing you can do- it builds up the infection. Seems like the dentist's office should have told me the whole tooth about that.
Nevertheless, at 10:30 Tuesday, I had the procedure. Dentists don't believe you when you tell them, "I have one of those jaws that don't numb easily." But guess what? I have one of those jaws that don't numb easily. I'd call them names for that, but dentists have fillings too.
She gave me the gum gel, inserted the needle with the heavy duty stuff into my jaw, and then did it again. The second time, it I thought she was trying to disembowel me through my mouth. Sorry, but the constipation wasn't that bad yet.
They told me to raise my hand if I had any problems. So, at one point when I started feeling sensation again, kind of ike someone is trying to pull a nerve out of your tooth, I held up my hand. The dental assistant shook her head, "no" and lowered my hand. I think they gave me more medicine though, because the pain stopped shortly after.
Since then, I've been out of it. My mouth is swollen even more than before. It still hurts, though not as much. Think I'm going to have to get that other cavity taken care of soon. Food doesn't taste the same, and even though I know I have to eat, trying to eat makes me sick to my stomach.
No, I'm not going to try to tie this into writing, except to say, this is why I haven't written for a few days. It's a shame too, as I'd built up some pretty good momentum. I'll get back to it soon.
In the meantime, thanks for letting me vent. This tooth issue still leaves me unfulfilled.
