Okay, first of all, my dentist is Jo Ann Crim at Mountain View Family Dentistry. She has passed my test and is approved as a Nice Dentist, so if you need one, go there. I have VERY high medical standards and don't like hardly anyone in that field other than Cathy.
She is not too young or too old, she is a mama, she has warm hands that are not too warm, she has a very tinkly laugh, she took WAY longer than the slotted time with me today and was very careful to do a good job with a bad situation.
The bad situation is this: The cavity in my upper rear tooth was HUGE. I told my father it was the size of a silver dollar as a joke, but I was not far off! It did not hurt, not heat or cold or pressure or anything. I went in just SURE it was the lower back tooth because it was giving me fits. I had already diagnosed it and decided it had to go, I did not even want to mess around with filling it. It HURT. Well, my bottom teeth barely even had plaque, no cavities, she took extra x-rays (that I was not charged for) to examine the bone and nerves and she poked around doing a visual inspection after the scans showed nothing. The tooth directly OVER the pain-infested site was badly damaged. We are both hoping that it was that shared nerve and the pain was being felt in the lower and caused by the upper.
She got in there and gouged out the old white filling. Then she drilled for a while, then she drilled a while longer and then she drilled some more. Then more shots-she actually LISTENED to me and gave me a very low-dose numbing stuff, so I did not get sick at all! But, she had to boost them halfway through because they were not as long-lasting, either. She dyed my rotten tooth and that showed more decay, she took more x-rays to be sure she was not going to hit the nerve. She chipped and drilled and messed with it for about an hour, trying to save as much tooth as she could without leaving any damage. When she reached the nerve, there was infection. So, she packed the tooth with something that tasted like...burning liquid...and let me stew a bit while the tooth 'calmed down'. Then she coated the nerve with some...paste thing that is our 'only hope' of saving the tooth.
Apparently the worry was that the tooth was either already dead-later bleeding assured her it was still vital-or that the infection had been draining through the cracked tooth and now that it was being sealed, it will have no where to drain to and I will have to have it pulled or have a root canal and a crown. The next few days will tell if I need a root canal as there will be pain and sensitivity. But today does not count as it is supposed to hurt because of the fillings and the injections. I will get it pulled if anything, the root canal and crown sound more invasive than just waking up with one less tooth. She said that was certainly an option since there is no tooth below it (wisdom tooth is gone) that it is not a chewing surface.
Let me just pause a moment to dwell on the 'draining infection' being IN MY MOUTH. She said it would be very tiny amounts, but still, OMG, that is just SO freaking gross. And I had NO IDEA. She could have said I had roaches in my hair and I would not have been any more freaked out, disgusted or shocked-since I have not seen or felt the roaches. I have gargled about 10 times, even though it is not longer happening. I am soothed by my long-running bad mood meaning while Matt has been neglected seriously, he has also not been subjected to smooches from my bacteria-laden pie hole in the recent past. I no longer feel sorry for him in the least.
Keep your fingers crossed the vile packing will do the job!
