In which I need a fucking root canal?!

My appointment was at two o’clock. I naively expected to be out of there in about an hour, but I didn’t get back to my desk until a quarter past four.

First of all, nobody told me about the smell. The drill wasn’t that loud nor did it hurt, but that burnt smell is weird, you guys. Srsly.

Wait, wait, back up! So, this was my very first filling ever, right, and I told the nurse¹ so. She was amazed because every single tooth in her head is filled, and some more than once. I was kind of excited because, hey, it’s a new experience and how many 43-year-olds get to experience their very first filling? Having survived not one but two planing & scaling experiences and four extractions, I’m no stranger to needles, so it’s not like there was anything to be nervous about.

We discussed my tooth as the topical soaked in and we waited for the doctor. The nurse showed me three tiny little discolorations on my x-ray, and read my chart to me. Lingual! Distal! Tiny cavities, all on the same tooth — tooth number 15, for those of you counting along at home.

Then my hip dentist arrived and I told him it was my first filling ever, and he smiled and said, “Ever?” and I said, “Ever!” and he sat down and picked something up and said, “Ever ever?” and I said “Ever!” and then he stuck a needle in my gum — he’s left-handed — and we sat there in the companionable silence you can only achieve with a relative stranger who has several digits in your mouth and is massaging anesthetic into your jaw.

I was left alone for a bit so the drug could take effect. Then doctor and nurse came back. He started drilling, and it went on for a long time, and then even longer, and I started to kinda not like it, and then it went on some more, and then he said, “Well, here’s the bad news. The cavity goes all the way to the root, so save the tooth we’ll have to remove the nerve. Root canal. We weren’t expecting to do an endo today, so I’ll fill this for now.” I laughed because I seriously did not fucking expect to hear root canal just then — I mean, this is my first cavity, okay? — but it turns out he wasn’t joking.

And then there were a few more processes I didn’t understand. The doctor had the nurse prepare some kind of goop which is applied in tiny amounts with, like, a toothpick or something, then some kind of weird structure is built in your mouth, and then you’re left alone for a quarter of an hour with sunglasses on and things sticking out of your lips. Then there’s filling material and a curing light so blue the dentist has to look at your mouth through a piece of orange plastic, and then when everyone’s hands are out of your mouth for a hot second you close your mouth briefly and realize your teeth no longer fit together and you make an involuntary noise and your hip dentist says, “Heh. What’d you learn?” and you say, “It feels like I have someone else’s tooth in my mouth,” and the nurse laughs and the dentist takes a Dremel to your tooth again until you can close comfortably and you say, “Oooh, nice!”

Then he takes films. You say, “More x-rays?” because you just had a bunch of x-rays two weeks ago and he says, “Need a picture of the root,” and runs two with his fingers still stuck in your mouth when the buzzer goes off. You idly wonder if years of doing that would increase his likelihood of, say, getting bone cancer in his fingers. He runs off to do something else, comes back, stares at your films on the monitor, and then tells you that he doesn’t feel that the filling filled very well. “I’d like to re-fill it. Do you have time?”

You do, what the hell. The back of your chair is lowered again and you open your mouth like a fish. By now the anesthetic has begun to wear off so you make faces and noises while he does something that feels quite like he’s shoving rusty tin foil into the fucking center of your tooth with an awl. And then there’s more composite – or filling material or whatever it’s called – and another weird structure is built and you’re told to “Close, please, all the way,” and then there you are again, alone in a chair, with things sticking out of your mouth and sunglasses on, thinking about how fast people can be when they actually need to be doing something else, because this second thing only took a fraction of the time the first one took, or maybe you’ve just been looking at this ceiling for a long time.

But soon he comes back and your mouth is emptied and your tooth is sanded down and you’re done! Then they’re across the hall and you turn and say, “I’ve never seen the majority of the dental instruments on display in here because I’ve never had anything but prophy. What is that thing? And StarFlow really doesn’t sound like it’s part of dentistry, if you catch me, heh heh heh.”

They come back into the exam room. You ask about roots and bacteria and all the steps that occurred after the drilling part, because none of them made any sense, and the nurse tells you “it’s just like when we get our nails done!” which makes a certain amount of sense where the light is concerned, and you learn some new vocabulary and also that your tooth does not, as you’d assumed, now have a bunch of bacteria sealed up in it. “There’s acid and heat involved in the procedure,” hip dentist says after your question, making a face. “Any bacteria in there are dead.” You realize you don’t entirely grok the whole tooth/cavity/filling thing and resolve to do some reading.

Then you ask, “So did this count as two fillings? Because I feel like I’ve achieved a lifetime’s worth of filling appointments in this one day!” and the nurse giggles, “Only you!” and the doctor makes a pained noise like a snort and a groan and you’re not sure if that means yes, you may count it as two or if it means that tooth of yours is a fucking mess and now my whole schedule is off for the rest of the day and you’re not quite sure it’d be okay to ask again since they do this shit for a living and your fascination with how you can tell this story doesn’t extend to them, not even a little bit.

Long story short, he wants you back sooner than later for endo, whatever that is, exactly, and he assures you he’s not going to overcharge you for whatever it is that he didn’t know was going to happen today. And, well, hell, you’ve seen your own films, and your tooth has never hurt, not even once, not even from a little temperature sensitivity, so you didn’t expect there to be “necrotic dental pulp” in there either.

I get out to the lobby and make my appointment for May 10. I bike back to my office. “Root canal!” I announce to the girls as I enter, “In ten days!” and they’re both suitably aghast. Within seconds I’ve googled root canal and endo and I’m about to look up composite and curing and filling material as well.

A dead tooth, even after endo and capping, is still prone to breakage. Not to mention the expense — probably a minimum of two grand — and me with zero insurance. I suppose I could just have the tooth extracted. On the other hand, it’s a whole new interesting procedure to live through, and one does want to keep her teeth when she can. Hmm. We’ll see.

Update: Now it’s 6:30 and the anesthetic has REALLY worn off, and nao my mouf weally huhts.

Update: Now it’s the next day and mom and my G’ma both seem to think I should get the tooth extracted, since I don’t have insurance and it’ll just come out eventually anyway. OTOH, they’re not dentists. Apparently good root canal will allow me to keep the tooth for another decade, maybe more, depending. I do occasionally have pictures taken of the inside of my goddamned mouth while I’m performing, so there is a genuine cosmetic angle, albeit a miniscule one. Plus I do most of my chewing there, I’ve noticed, so losing it would be more of an adjustment than losing its opposite on the other side of my mouth…

Anybody have any further anecdotes or opinions on the endo vs. extraction issue? Yes, I understand that YANMD².

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¹ Nurse, assistant: I have no idea what the correct title is.
² You Are Not My Dentist.