![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
More holes in my head
Jan. 8th, 2010 11:39 pmHaving survived my birthday yesterday with few malingering side effects, my Quest of the Day today involved a quasi-emergency trip to the dentist, because the wisdom tooth on my upper right was doing what the wisdom tooth on my upper left was doing a few months ago (i.e. crumbling like a day-old cake donut) and being intermittently ouchy. The disconcerting part, though, was that the tooth next to it was going, too, and if yanking them out proved to be in the cards, I'd have no teeth meeting on that side (I have a gap on the bottom where a few baby teeth never had adult teeth behind them). On the one hand, that would be Bad; on the other, intermittently ouchy could very easily segue into wall-punching dear-gods-get-me-some-f*#$ing-Vicodin no-cutesy-names-for-it PAIN.
The actual visit with Dr. Kisiel, though, was full of surprises: apparently, the crumbling wisdom tooth wasn't nearly as bad as the one neighboring. After jabbing my dentin with a hook for a few seconds—an activity for those who enjoy slamming appendages in car doors—he told me that what he'd recommend was shooting me full of Novocaine, cleaning out the decay, see if things had progressed down to the nerves or not, and decide if we'd need Minor Repair (fillings) or Major Overhaul (root canal and/or yanking the bastards). Prayer ensued, as did the following conversation after the oh-so-lovely drilling paused for a moment:
Me: So how's it looking in there?
Dr. Kisiel: Scary. I had my eyes closed for most of it.
I adore him.
Long story slightly less long, decay was deep but not to the nerve, so some massive but effective fillings went into place, and to my joy and relief there are, like, teeth in my teeth. Huzzah for the miracle of modern dentistry! I celebrated with French fries and going back to work, having blown off a sizable portion of the day for the sake of this little frogmarch. With any luck, this'll hold up better than my poor natural choppers, which seem to have been whittled by first graders with safety scissors and balsa wood. Stupid mouth of mine.
The actual visit with Dr. Kisiel, though, was full of surprises: apparently, the crumbling wisdom tooth wasn't nearly as bad as the one neighboring. After jabbing my dentin with a hook for a few seconds—an activity for those who enjoy slamming appendages in car doors—he told me that what he'd recommend was shooting me full of Novocaine, cleaning out the decay, see if things had progressed down to the nerves or not, and decide if we'd need Minor Repair (fillings) or Major Overhaul (root canal and/or yanking the bastards). Prayer ensued, as did the following conversation after the oh-so-lovely drilling paused for a moment:
Me: So how's it looking in there?
Dr. Kisiel: Scary. I had my eyes closed for most of it.
I adore him.
Long story slightly less long, decay was deep but not to the nerve, so some massive but effective fillings went into place, and to my joy and relief there are, like, teeth in my teeth. Huzzah for the miracle of modern dentistry! I celebrated with French fries and going back to work, having blown off a sizable portion of the day for the sake of this little frogmarch. With any luck, this'll hold up better than my poor natural choppers, which seem to have been whittled by first graders with safety scissors and balsa wood. Stupid mouth of mine.
