root canal

I've been having a problem with a lower back tooth for about two years caused initially by my jaw mis-alignment. The tooth was so sore that I haven't chewed on that side of my mouth for at least a year.

Now that my jaw is fixed my dentist finally told me to go see an endodontist. I went to see Dr. Parri Carnes. He was GREAT.

I have to say the appointment got off to a bad start because I had to get up at fucking 5:45 to drive out to his office for a 7:45 am appointment. I reassured myself that he probably didn't think I needed a root canal because no sane person would make such an early appointment for a root canal.

He took an x-ray of my tooth, which kind of hurt because I have a small mouth. Then he did a cold test, which involved freezing a q-tip with what ever that spray crap is that you can use to blow dust off your keyboard and touching it to the tooth in question. When he did that I seriously almost vomited from the pain. He was like "yep, you need a root canal" but his voice sounded really far away.

I must have looked crazy traumatized because he offered to let me come back on a different day for the root canal. And he offered to sedate me when I said I just wanted to get it over with. I was like "I'll be fine" but he said I should take a few minutes to relax and read my magazine (Harper's, story about chicken farming) before we started. Also, he gave me pink protective eye wear because he said it matched my pink hair.

He has this cool computer controlled needle that he used to numb me. It hardly hurt at all. And except for pressure I didn't feel a thing during the root canal. The only bad part was when the part of the dental equipment I had in my mouth got stuck on my nose.

For the root canal they put in what's called a dam, which is just a sheet of really thick stretchy plastic (like a theraband), to isolate the tooth and keep it away from the rest of your mouth and then they stretch the dam over a round plastic circle (imagine one of your teeth jumping on an trampoline and that's pretty much what it looks like). The plastic circle was a little too big for my face and during one of the breaks in the root canal I somehow jostled it and got it caught on and sort of up my nose. Embarrassing.

In any case, by 9 am the whole thing was over and he offered to give me pain meds and I was like "dude, I've had organs taken out and didn't take pain meds, is this going to be worse than that?" He said "probably, no". Anyway, I have no real pain yet, especially compared to how bad that tooth used to feel.

Fingers crossed it doesn't hurt tomorrow.

And more updates soon on some other stuff I've been up to, the past week has been super busy...