Monday, November 30, 2009

Ow, Quit It. Ow, Quit It.

As I write this I cannot feel the right side of my face. I am the physical embodiment of that Bill Cosby bit. Last year when I was getting my cleaning done I mentioned some pain that I was having in one of my toofs. After knocking on it for a good 10 minutes with a tiny hammer (so not awesome), my dentist announced that I have a cracked tooth and that he would recommend that I get a crown put in. This was just before Thanksgiving of last year. I nodded and agreed that boy-howdy I should totally ruin my Thanksgiving and have dental work done. He popped in a temporary filling and I blew him off for an entire year while learning that chewing on one side of my mouth wasn't so hard to do. Cut to earlier this month when I was back at his office getting my teeth cleaned and I mentioned that maybe I should get that crown done y'know?

And that's what I did this morning. I've never had this done before and if you have not either let me tell ya, while it certainly isn't horrific, it is far from pleasant. There was a lot of drilling and poking and use of that little evil vacuum thing. I don't know how many shots of Novocaine or whatever they use now I got but it still didn't quite take all the pain away. There were a few times when he hit close to a nerve and my death grip on the arm rests of the seat tightened. My dentist is a good dude and I know he noticed (hold on a sec...I'm drooling again) the furrowed brow and white knuckles and he checked in with me to see if I was ok. I wasn't really but c'mon Doc, let's just get this over with ok? The drilling went on forever. Did you know that dentists run the risk of going deaf because of the noise that the drill makes? That seems fair to me.

So now I have a temporary crown jammed in there and I have to go back in late December to have the real deal put in. The temp is a bizarre color, sort of off-white and almost yellow-ish. I'm hoping that the second appointment is quicker and less shitty. I'll have to wait and see. In the meantime I want to have my lunch but I'm afraid to chew. Hold me?

1 comment:

Dave Blanchette said...

YES! Just had it done a few months back. My favorite part - when they're about to put on the new crown and say,"your tooth might be a bit sensitive to the 'cold' glue/putty stuff." Yeah. Sensitive.
If it makes you feel any better, I had surgery on my ankle the afternoon before Thanksgiving. It broke while I was walking on ice, on a sidewalk. Then I noticed that the big turkey leg reminded me of an ankle. So I got some breast meat instead.
-The End