It's Like Having a Root Canal Part II

Ya'll.

Okay, so do you want the long version or the short version of this tale of root canal woe?

Short version:

It wasn't that bad and I got two kinds of pain killers to take me to a happy place. If that's all you wanna know about my root canal you can stop reading here.

If you're still reading that must mean you want the LONG version. As in a play by play.

Long version:

When I left yesterday to face the music drill I wasn't all that nervous. I'd been reassured by the endontics specialist and my regular hygienist who's had like eight(!) root canals that it's no worse than a filling. Fillings I can handle. Been there enough that it's old hat. So yeah. I wasn't nervous.

I walked into the Reg. Bev. Wil. of dentists office and they immediately whisked me away and into the procedure room. I got to wait there for around twenty minutes or so while the assistant (or are they nurses?? I don't know.) readied the room and then left me with a cotton swab of local anesthesia between my gums and upper lip to get me ready for THE INJECTION.

The longer I lay in the dentist chair with that swab between my gums and lip the more time I had to look around me. Suddenly the half drawn blinds took on the look of prison bars, the reclining dentists chair more like a manacle and heaven help me, but I looked over at the tray of instruments she'd left. More like tools of torture. Suddenly I started to wonder if everyone had lied to me. Surely this had to be worse than a filling. I mean, have you seen all the tools they use for a root canal? *shudders*

To to mention the fact that I'd waited so long that I started to think the numbing stuff they put on my gums was already starting to wear off and Omigosh! What if my gums aren't numb when he does THE INJECTION? 

By the time the endontics dentist comes in to do THE INJECTION I was a little on the breathless side and my heart was racing a wee bit. Ya'll, I had to close my  eyes when he reached for the needles because I never like to see a needle coming. Especially not one that they have to deaden your mouth just to be able to give it to you. I just had to keep chanting to myself, "No worse than a filling. No worse than a filling." Because, you know, they give you a shot for a filling, too, that they hafta numb your gums for. I made it through the first one just fine. It truly did feel like the injection they give you just prior to a filling. Easy peasy. BUT THEN...He pulls up another needle and says, "Open wider. This is going to sting a bit. It's the worst one," just before stabbing me in the Roof. Of MY. MOUTH.

*whimper* It did sting. It hurt about as much as it does when I burn the roof of my mouth on too hot pizza sauce.

Almost instantly the left side of my face went slack and my nose felt dead. And they leave me in there AGAIN to ponder my fate.

They really should provide their patients with a television or some ear buds or something. Because guess what I got to listen to while I waited for my face to die? Drilling.

Yeah. Dude had two of us going at the same time, though he was almost done with the first one. Drilling is NOT something you necessarily something you want to listen to when you know that you're next. And periodically the assistant would pop in and ask, "You doing okay?" Every five minutes like clockwork. "You doing okay?"

I always answered, "Mm-hmm" but after the first five "You doing okay?"s I thought about responding with a "Nu-huh." just to see what she'd do. Then I starting thinking crazy weird thoughts like, What would they do if I, like, died while I was waiting on them? Do people ever actually die in the dentist's chair? Would they freak out trying to get me to revive or be all shushed and quietly call an ambulance to come take me? How long before they'd notice I was dead? Would he do the root canal and never realize it?

I was in that chair for far too long, people.

Just as I was working myself up into another breathless heart pouding tizzy the assistant came in and asked me was I good and dead.

No joke. "How are you? Are you good and dead yet?"

If I'd been able to move my lips I might had laughed. Unfortunately,  all I could do is grunt an affirmative and cackle silently in my head.

Just to be sure I was "good and dead" she pulled up the stool and grabbed a couple of those tools of torture and says, "Tell me if you feel anything sharp," before poking me in the roof of my mouth and on my gums. She even switched tools and poked me again! Then she took another tool and shot it with what I can only assume is nitrogen to get it cold and presses it against my teeth. "Feel anything cold?"

Oh, she better be sooooo glad I couldn't feel my own eyeball in my head.

"Yep. You're good and dead." Then she checks to make sure I'm not allergic to anything before clamping a square of latex onto my teeth. A dam, I believe it's called. It's literally clamped. To your teeth. While your mouth is open.  The took my glasses, leaving me blind and stuck a pair of tinted goggles on my face. AND THEN she hangs one of those hook shaped instruments from the right side of my bottom lip. Just hangs it there. I'm thinking, "Did they run out of room on the tray? Is he gonna need that thing in a hurry? What the crap?" With a "Dr. C will be in in a sec. You still okay?" she was gone again, leaving me with my mouth stuck open and a square of latex clamped to my teeth and a hook hanging from my bottom lip.

Honestly, the CIA should be taking notes on methods of torture. Because it was at this point I started thinking I needed to leave and quick.

I waited another torturous twenty minutes or so before the endontics dude and the assistant came back in chatting about some chick who's lost. They immediately go to work and ya'll, I couldn't feel a thing so I just closed my eyes and took a little nap. And I'm only half joking here. Once I realized that I couldn't feel anything and I wasn't going to die, be tortured by a group of spies or be a part of some weird science experiment my heart rate slowed, I loosened my grip on the arm rests and closed my eyes. and I'm fairly certain I did actually doze off a couple of times.

The hardest part about the whole thing was the discomfort of being dangled upside down with my mouth clamped open for an hour. (And the sounds. The sounds!) I was sure my jaw was going to lock and I'd be stuck with my mouth open forever and by the time they were done and righted the chair I almost couldn't move, my neck and back were so stiff.

After the assistant got me cleaned up and unclamped she led me to another room for x-rays, the dentist took a peek at them and liked what he saw, told me I need to get a crown before the first of the year, wrote me out a prescription for two pain meds and sent me to the front desk to pay up. The assistant instructed me on when to take which med and how to rinse with warm salt water to clean my gums where they'd apparently  had to drain a small abscess. (Yuck.)

It wasn't until I was at the front desk handing over my debit card that the REAL pain kicked in. *sob*

So, the next time someone uses the line, "It was like having a root canal" I hope you'll picture me dangling upside down with a square of latex clamped to my teeth holding my mouth open. Because really, that's the worst of it. The rest of it? Just like getting a filling. Only eight times more expensive. ;-)