Night at the dentist
I’ve been scheduled for a big dental procedure for a while now. I had to push it back several times due to work.
His saying "no, we need several hours for this" didn’t encourage me to get to it quickly.
It ended up taking 2 1/2 hours. I knew it was going to take a while, but when he got out the hammer and chisel, I really started to worry about if I was going to lose some teeth.
"Don’t worry about the construction workers, keep you eyes closed," he said and went back to hammering my lower jaw.
Afterwards he reached in with some vice grips. There was a crunching sound and he pulled something out.
"uuuuh," I said, meaning "what’s going on?"
"Don’t worry, it is supposed to sound like that," he said.
It ended up taking three shots of pain blockers as I have a tendency to burn through them very quickly.
He could tell as I winched each time he went by the nerve that I could feel it and would give me another shot.
Sadly I not only burn through it quickly but seem to be mildly allergic to it, so I have trouble breathing when injected.
Not really the best thing when you’re upside down in the chair with a mouth full of dental equipment.
Apparently the two teeth are right on the boarder of needing a root canal.
"It’s 50/50," he said. "So, I’m not going to do it tonight. You seem to be a bit sensitive to my drilling on your nerves, so I think drilling in them would be worse."
I think he was right about this, but only said "uuuuh", meaning "I’d rather not have two root canals tonight".
When he was finally done with drilling there was another problem.
"I’ve drilled out the area for the bases in the teeth," he said. "Now I’ve got to place them. But, there is so much blood welling up that I’m not sure I’ll be able to do it."
"uuuuh," I said, meaning "that sounds really bad, what can you do?"
"I’m going to give you a shot of something that should stop the bleeding. Meanwhile, pray that it does."
I looked over at the big picture of Jesus on his wall and did as instructed.
"Hey, it worked!" he said a short time later. "Maybe we should go out in the parking lot and see if I can walk on water."
"uuuuh," I said, meaning "all water in Massachusetts is frozen this winter, walking on it isn’t difficult".
"I’m going to file down this other tooth that seems sharp," he said at one point.
"uuuuh," I said, meaning "several are sharp, which do you mean?"
"The front right bottom one," he said, and went at it with the drill.
"uuuuh," I said, meaning "that does feel better!"
"You can feel it with your tongue? Time for another shot!"
Finally he was done. Impressions have been taken. A pair of temp crowns are in. In a couple of weeks the final ones will come in now.
"That will be $1400 now and another $1000 when they come in," he said.
"uuuuh," I said. Nothing was blocking me from talking at that point.
"No, that is after insurance," he said.
Well, between the car repairs and the teeth, that’s our tax refund for this year. Actually, I think it is a bit more than that.
uuuuh.