The Root Canal

Was not actually that bad.

The appointment was for 3:30, and I had pills I was supposed to take at 3:00. I completely forgot the pills until about 3:25, and began freaking out a bit at work. When I left the office, I was begging people to kill me. By the time I reached the dentist's office, across the street, I was just fiiiiiiiiiine. Those little pills work fast!

Dr. Martin named her practice Compassionate Comprehensive Dentistry, and she works really hard at keeping up her reputation for being a sweetie. I sat down in the massage-y chair, and she gave me a shot of novocaine. Then another. And another. She drilled for a second, saw me wince a bit (it felt cold, which apparently means that the nerve is still feeling something) and then gave me another shot. This went on for a bit, until I'd had 7 shots all together, some directly into the tooth canal.

I popped on my iPod and initially put on Bloc Party- huge mistake. An album called "Silent Alarm" is not what you want to listen to when undergoing major dentistry and you're secretly afraid of the dentist (at least she doesn't have fish in her office!). I put on the least threatening thing on my iPod- John Denver and the Muppets singing Christmas songs.

There's minimal drilling involved in a root canal. It's a process that saves the tooth after the nerve has, for whatever reason, been destroyed by cleaning out the nerve and the bacteria that lives there. Different teeth have different amounts of canals. Dr. Martin was working on my molar all the way in the back, which had three canals. That nifty little picture shows a root canal file. They're made from titanium and start out incredibly narrow and get wider. They do exactly what they sound like they do- the file into the canal of your tooth to get out all the nerves and tooth detritus. It's a long, tedious process- not painful at all. Actually, the worst part involved feeling really stiff and not being able to stretch when I woke up (nice little unintentional nap, seriously, those were some great drugs) because she was still working.

So the process isn't so bad. Since seven shots of novocaine and Xanax are about like taking seven shots of vodka with Xanax, I wobbled around the streets for a little while until The Object found me and propped me up, took me home and got me into jammies and fed me ice cream. The pain is an achiness in my jaw akin to having been kicked, but it's nothing too terrible. That said, there's only a temporary paste over my tooth (tastes like cloves) and I have to go back for round two in a month to get the tooth all put back together. I'll keep you all posted.