Hopeful

Well, after yesterday afternoon's advil wore off, there hasn't been any additional pain. Hopefully it was just the whole fitting process bugging that nerve a little. The fact that I got through 2, 75-minute classes without pain is a good sign. The gum is a little sore where I took the Novocaine shot, but that's ALWAYS the case after dental work for me.

And a weird thing - I said to the dentist that after the novocaine shots, my soft palate felt numb, almost like I couldn't swallow right, and when I was tipped back I'd get the sort of panicky feeling like it was closing off (maybe that's like what people with sleep apnea experience?). He said that 'wasn't normal' but didn't seem to want to discuss any further.

I wonder how they "set" the novocaine doses. Is it the same for everyone, or do they kind of size someone up and go, well, she's 5' 7" and weighs 160 if she weighs an ounce, so we better give her more? I'm so sensitive to so many medications that I wonder if maybe I'm getting a bigger dose of the crap than I need. But I tend to be too compliant and too apprehensive to want to approach my dentist about it. I'm just fearful that if I had to have prolonged work, I really would get like sleep apneac and have a hard time breathing....

oh, thank goodness

God bless the person who invented ibuprofen. Seriously.

I got the permanent crown on today. It wasn't that bad, but because that tooth still has a living root, the dentist warned me: when the Novocaine wears off, it's probably gonna hurt for a while. (Because he had to keep re-fitting the thing, then taking it off and grinding it down - it was too high). All that messing with the tooth upset the nerve.

Man, he was right. I ran a couple errands, then I got home, and realized the whole left side of my mouth was throbbing like heck. So badly I couldn't even concentrate on the magazine I was trying to read. (The Paula Deen cooking one, which I'm not resubscribing to - none of the recipes are really anything I'd make, a lot of the cakes are doctored-up mixes [horrors!] and the rest is kind of the low-grade-celebrity fluff that turns me off).

So I took a couple of Advil. (Well, really the Target generic form of Advil...way cheaper). It's been not quite a half an hour and the pain is gone.

If I have pain again when I get in bed tonight, I'm going to take a couple more. Yeah, I know, there are limits on how many you're supposed to take, but I'm a good-sized woman. (My brother - well, he weighs more than I do but not VASTLY more - was told by his doctor that once in a while, if he was having REALLY bad pain [this was after he broke his collarbone in a bike accident], he could take three at a go. Not often. Certainly not do it every dose. But I figure if a doctor said that it's probably OK for a largeish woman to take a total of four of the regular-sized tablets over a seven or eight hour span.

I just hope this clears up fast. I don't really "notice" how bad pain is when I'm having it but it kind of clouds everything - I can't work as effectively, I have to concentrate harder while doing things like driving, I can't enjoy relaxation time. I manage, but I'm not happy. The funny thing is, I really don't "notice" it as being painful, what I "notice" is that I don't feel like I'm supposed to.

Not sure what I'm going to eat tonight. I do have some broth in the fridge and maybe I'll try my hand at making spaetzle to go in it. What I'd really LIKE is a milkshake but I fear the cold might not be good for the tooth.

another little good thing

My tooth (the one with the temporary) hasn't hurt this week. (Well, unless I drink something really really cold, but that sometimes sets off my non-messed-with teeth, so I don't count that as a concern).

And one more week to go (if things go as they should) and I get the real crown put on and can eat more or less normally again. (I've been very cautious about not eating sticky or really hard things - which is kind of a challenge for someone who likes nuts as much as I do.)

Dr. Teeth and the non-electric mayhem

WordGirl, thanks for the reassurance. I think you are correct - it's just occasional twingey feelings, it'll bug me for a couple minutes and then by the time I'm able to go find the Advil, in a lot of cases, it's gone away.

I've also developed the bad habit (which I should try to break myself of) of feeling the temporary with my tongue, with "just checking" to make sure nothing's wrong, and that's probably irritating the tooth and gum more.

The fact that I can (gently) chew on that side without pain is a good sign, I think.

I am still taking Advil right at bedtime, if no other time of the day - it's kind of unpleasant to wake up to a hurting mouth in the dead dark of night and have to go into the bathroom and turn on the light (so I can be sure I'm getting Advil and not, say, that little canister of silica they put in the bottles that is labeled DO NOT EAT). And then be wide-awake for the next half-hour or so because I had to put the light on.

Dental problems really suck, y'know that? I really sympathize now with the people who have serious dental issues - the worst I ever had up to this was the occasional filling or a once-or-twice-a-season tooth and sinus sensitivity brought on by crazy weather.

I also really feel for the people who live with chronic pain - I suppose at some point you learn to accept it and maybe even manage to work around it, but as someone who lives a (mostly) pain-free existence, it's like, wow, it really distracts you to have something hurting, even intermittently.

And I think the fact that it's been goshawful hot and humid here (it's about 10 degrees above what it "should" be right now) and the fact that some of the rooms in which I teach have indifferent air conditioning at best (and I think it was OUT in the lab room I taught in this afternoon - or at any rate it was pretty sticky and nasty by the end of the afternoon and a lot of the students were grabbing paper towels to wipe their faces with (and not just the big guy who's always perspiring).

I'm really glad tomorrow is "my" Friday, with no classes the next day (and my research student is out of town, so no running out to field sites, either. I do have work I can do but it's inside-type work that I can even do at home if the a/c isn't running well at school.)

Well, I don't know...

So, two weeks ago tomorrow, I had the prep work done for a crown (a simple crown. Not a root canal. Basically it was the removal of an old filling and the "shaping" of the tooth [and believe you me, that thought makes me shudder] to be able to accept the new crown).

New crown comes in two more weeks. Or at least that's when I can get it put on.

So I've had a temporary. Or rather, temporaries. The first one seemed not to work; it was okay the first couple days (but that might have been because I was assiduously following the "every six hours take either Tylenol or Advil" regime - I have a very small mouth and any kind of work being done in there leads to a lot of pain, simply from my having to prop my jaw open for that long).

Starting on - I guess it was Saturday after the procedure - I started to have pain. Pretty bad pain. Mostly while eating. So I sort of stopped eating, decided to let the thing heal itself (bad idea, ricki) and just kept going.

I taught Sunday school on Sunday but wasn't at the top of my form.

(An aside - I think for me, tooth pain or head pain is the most miserable kind. I think that's because I have a harder time "detaching" it from "me." I broke an elbow about 15 years ago and spent six weeks (in the summer) with one of those crooked-arm casts from my shoulder to my wrist. And I managed. And I even refused the Toradol prescription my orthopedist wrote for me. And I have a bum ankle thanks to years of having one foot that pronates and years of wearing flat flat shoes (Keds sneakers in grade school; those damn flat Chinese cotton shoes when I was a pretentious high-school student). And I can deal with at. But anything around my neck, mouth, or head - forget it.)

I didn't sleep - well, hardly at all - Sunday night before last because of the combo platter of pain, high humidity, my #$&# neighbor's barking dog and my neighbor's $#%(*&$ security light.

So finally, on Monday, I decided I HAD to have it looked at. That even if it meant a root canal, I had to have something done, I couldn't keep going on with the pain and the not-eating and the very-gingerly-drinking of water (water made it hurt too).

So I went in. Turned out that a little piece had broken off of the temporary, exposing part of the "shaped" (shudder) tooth.

So the dentist took the old temporary off (he said it could have been the hygienist who made it didn't do it just right) and replaced it with a new one.

And it's mostly been better. Mostly. My mouth still hurts periodically. It's not the horrible, throbbing, why-is-someone-pushing-an-icepick-into-my-gum pain. It's more like sinus pain - sort of a dull ache. It's worst when I lie down at night or when I get up in the morning. Once in a while during the day - usually as I'm closing up on the end of my classes for the morning - I will get a twinge.

The thing is - one Advil is enough to get rid of it. So - and this may be just denial kicking in - I don't think it can be anything TOO bad. And I'll go for many many hours without taking another dose (like, 20 hours) and be OK. But then it'll come back.

So I don't know. Part of me really doesn't want to have to live on Advil, or at least not to live on it until the permanent crown goes in. But part of me just wants to tough it out until the next appointment - my dentist is very busy and while he's kind enough to 'fit someone in' who's having pain - it often means an hour+ wait in the waiting room.

But part of me is terrified that it's something horribly terribly wrong. Like, I have the world's only case ever of dry-socket-without-having-a-tooth-pulled-first. Or that there's some kind of horrible brain-eating infection getting established in there. Or that he'll pull off the old temporary, recoil in horror, and tell me I need an emergency root canal followed by prep for dental implants. Or that the tooth NEXT to where the crown work is done has a crack in it now, and I'll have to go through the same agony again next month.

Part of the problem is that this is new territory for me. I've never had this process before so I don't know if the occasional bit of pain is just an expected follow-up, or if temporaries are just uniformly unsatisfactory and getting the real crown will clear everything up. And friends who've had experience are little help - one person blinked at me and suggested I ask my dentist for a pain-pill prescription (yeah, great. Then who will drive me to work? And for that matter, who will teach my classes for me when I'm out of it?) And another looked very worried and started muttering about root canals and stuff like that.

So I don't know. But it's one of those minorly life-sucking things that I wind up with sometimes - that aren't really horrible enough to, say, take a sick day over, but which are horrible enough to affect my concentration and focus.

Not so bad, actually

One of the things I was dreading a little bit (OK, more than a little bit) about the end of vacation was that I had to go in and get a tooth prepped for a crown.

This was the first crown I'd ever had (my mom has lots; I guess she got the British/Scottish bad-tooth genes). Generally my teeth are pretty good because I'm fairly obsessive about taking care of them, but I don't know if this one just had weak enamel or if having the "band" on it when I had braces damaged it or what, but it's been filled a couple times and this time the dentist decided he couldn't fix it up any more; it had to be a crown.

I think what scared me badly was that they first had nitrous treatment down on the list of things. I've never had nitrous, I really don't WANT nitrous, and actually, once I've had the initial anesthetic, I'm pretty OK with the process. (I don't like needles.)

So I kind of freaked out a little when the appointment-set-up person recommended it.

"Is it REALLY that bad?" I asked.
"Well, most of our patients want nitrous. I can take it off if you don't want it."

I told her I didn't - partly because I hate the thought of being out of "control" during what should be a fairly simple medical procedure, partly because I react strangely to some medications (I cannot, for example, take any decongestant - they shoot my heart rate up to dangerous levels), and partly because I'm claustrophobic enough that having someone's hands in my mouth is bad, and having a thing over my nose too would be even worse.

She kind of shrugged and took it off the list of procedures but her attitude seemed to telegraph, "OK, it's your funeral."

So I wondered how bad it really was going to be.

My mother - who, as I said, has had several crowns done - assured me that it was not that bad. Not really any worse than having an old filling replaced, which I've had done (It's not fun, but sometimes it needs to be done). She was surprised they even suggested nitrous. (But then again, she had two babies the "natural" way, and she also doesn't take Novocaine if it's a "small" cavity being repaired).

Another person I talked to that I know who has crowns assured me that it really was not that bad, and that I was wise not to get the nitrous. "I started to get hysterical when I was going under," she said, "I wound up ripping the thing off my face. The most miserable part of the process was the nitrous."

So I went in this morning, not knowing for sure what to expect.

An aside - I think for me one of the real hallmarks of being a "for-real" grownup is doing things you absolutely detest, absolutely DO NOT WANT to do, but doing them because they are important and need to be done. Driving over there, I thought how easy it would be for me to turn off onto the highway and drive far away and blow off the appointment, but I knew if I did that, I'd have to re-make the appointment (and maybe pay a fee for missing - I don't know if this dentist does that but one of my former dentists did - if you failed to show without cancelling, he charged you something like $15 to re-make the appointment). And I figured if the tooth got any worse, it might mean a root canal, which I really didn't want.

So I went in. The nurse (What do you call the assistants who are kind of more than a hygienist but aren't themselves a dentist?) said she was expecting me and showed me back.

(This is the part that, if you're really dental-phobic, you might wish to skip. I won't be too graphic though. Go down to the asterisks if you're skipping).

I reminded her of not wanting nitrous. "Oh, that's fine, that's no problem, you'll be OK" she assured me.

The dentist came in and I started to tear up a little. (I HATE that. I wish I could be totally stoic and calm but the anticipation makes me cry). He assured me I'd be OK, that I was actually pretty calm as patients went (he's done work on me before). He told me that it was really no worse than having a filling replaced, and that he had done that on me before with no problems. He told me there would be a couple of things that were a little different and explained them. (I kind of wished he hadn't gone into detail about the "shaping near the gum line" because that freaked me a little. I don't like anyone screwing with my gums). The nurse swabbed some kind of stuff onto my gum and he gave me the first novocaine injection.

I really, really, really, really do not like needles. I had several bad experiences - both at a dentist and at the doctor's - when I was a young child and even though I don't consciously remember the events, the thought of an injection (more than allergy shots) really bugs me. (I have to do a major process of "gutting up" to even go in and get the flu shot).

"You're OK, you're OK" he assured me. "Worst part will be over soon."

The worst part though was the injection into the roof of the mouth. I know it was necessary, having had it eliminated any pain during the process, but I really did not like it.

Once that was done, I calmed down. The dentist went off to attend to another patient while the nurse prepped me and did the various molds that were needed.

****

The molding process was actually kind of interesting. First she tried wax - they wanted a mold of the tooth for the final crown. But she couldn't get the wax warm enough to shape to suit her, so she asked me if I was "OK" with them using a gel type stuff (they call it blue mousse) to take the impression.

Well, what I wanted to be "OK" was the finished crown, so I said yes.

It wasn't bad. It was a lot worse when I had the impressions taken before I had my braces. This was little and easy. She also held tooth-color-chips up to my teeth to pick the right color for the crown. (They are doing porcelain. Gold was an option, but meh. I'm not the right culture to go for "bling" in my mouth.)

The dentist came back and did the work. And you know, it really was not that bad. He told the truth when he said it was no worse than replacing a filling - and in a way, it was better, because they didn't have to do the step of putting the solvent in the tooth, which always made me feel ill.

Also, I was glad it was the older guy - there are two dentists in the practice and while they are both good, I think the older guy is a little surer of himself (more years of experience) and also is gentler.

Once that was done they cleaned the whole area up and fitted some kind of plastic junk in a tray onto the area - to make the temporary crown. (That was actually worse than the "blue mousse" because some of the plastic oozed out and was pressing on the roof of my mouth, making me want to gag).

There was a long process of fitting and shaping the temporary, and finally they cemented it in. So I was sent home with a warning not to chew anything too hard or to eat taffy until the final crown is put in, and also to rinse my mouth out with salt water periodically for the next couple days (something about the gums having been messed with, I didn't ask too much detail at that point).

(I don't generally eat a lot of hard stuff - or taffy or caramel - but I will have to remind myself not to chew ice. I have kind of a bad habit of chewing ice if I'm out somewhere and get a drink with ice in it.)

The temporary is kind of ugly so I'm glad it's far enough back in my mouth that you can't see it. It's sort of a gray color, but I suppose that since it's for just 3 weeks, it's not worth using any kind of a coloring agent.

The other thing I'm glad of is that I sprang for the dental insurance when I started working here. It's something like $25 a month taken out of my paycheck but it saved my tail this time - the whole crown process would have been over $1000 if I had paid for it all myself, but with insurance it cost me $350.