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Home > Michelle's Blog > Previous Postings > 07/11/07
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Previous Postings |
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July 11, 2007:
What’s that Canyon in your Mouth?A couple weeks ago I wrote part one of “Going to the Dentist” and I got overwhelming stories of other people’s dentist stories. So, as anticipated, here is part II…
…After the first 18 years of my life in Albert City, Iowa, I waved good-bye and off I went to college. During those years, as most of you that had terrible dentist stories growing up, I rebelled and decided I did not need to go to the Dentist again – EVER!
Year after year, my teeth that were used to being “maintained”, now had the freedom to be whatever they wanted. They could eat and drink and be merry, just like the rest of the body, and no one was going to care. (That makes me think of so many thoughts regarding my freshman 15 lbs, my beater of a car that also did not get maintained, etc, etc, but we’ll leave those stories for another time….)
I made it through the end of my Jr. year in college with basically no teeth problems, when all of a sudden, I was chewing gum, and half of my upper, right molar came out with my gum. I crunched down on something in my gum, and when I looked inside my mouth, it was gone. Just gone!! Well, of course I decided that I could live without that part of that one single tooth. For goodness sakes, I had a whole mouthful of others.
My senior year of college begins, and with it came the pain of missing half a tooth. Instead of visiting my nemesis, I decided to become intimate with Advil. I popped those little red suckers morning, noon and night – just to stop the pain. And it worked – other than I’m sure I had the thinnest blood in the country, but hey, going to the Dr. was also something I was not accustomed to, so who cares…
The next summer, I graduated from college, moved to the Twin Cities for my first job at West Publishing Company, and decided, “Fine, when I make it six months here, I get my dental insurance. I’ll go get this thing looked at. How bad can it be?” So six months and one day later, I was eating lunch with a friend I had met at my new job – Cheeseburger and French Fries – when a FF went straight up into this now much bigger hole in my tooth. I think it hit a tear duct or something because, not only was it very painful, but a huge tear ran down my cheek. My lunch partner was looking at me with fear in her eyes – “What’s wrong? Did I say something?”
So off I went to find a dentist. He gave me Novocain – something I was not very accustomed to from my youth. And he gave me gas – something I never had as a youth. The gas made me start singing, so they took that off to keep my mouth from opening and closing, and begun working on this canyon that had grown inside my mouth. After drilling for awhile, he says, “We’ve begun a root canal.” I didn’t really know what that was, but I was clutching the chair so hard, breathing like I had just run a marathon, so I’m not really sure I heard what he was saying – or cared.
He drilled and drilled. All at once, I blacked out. When I awoke, I had the sense that I had just experienced the most pain I had ever felt, had the sensation that I was hanging from the ceiling praying that I did not drop back into that chair.
He said, “Sorry about that. I hit an air pocket in one of your roots.” He had diagrams and pictures to explain what had happened. How we have 3 roots and one of mine had a fourth little root. What I’m hearing is “Blah, Blah, Blah…” After the next two visits to put on the crown and finish up the root canal, I never went back. And this tooth certainly felt better, but for the next 17 years, it was always tender when I touched the gums….
To hear the rest of this story – 17 years later – come back next week for the final episode of “Going to the Dentist”..
Keep smiling and show those pearly whites!!
Michelle
