One of my favorite youtube videos of all time is this one: http://youtu.be/-fVDGu82FeQ
Unfortunately I can't embed it and so you will have to check out the link to see what I am talking about.
I have to agree with this boy. Blood is NOT FUNNY!
Yesterday I went to the dentist.
I have horrendous teeth which I inherited from my fathers side of the family.
I have always had bad teeth and I have never had a positive experience with a dentist. I am extremely reluctant to visit a dentist which I understand makes it worse when I do finally go because I don't go until I am in pain and hence all interactions are painful.
I think they would be anyway - but that is my bias.
I also get tired of telling dentists why I have no enamel on my teeth - the result of illness when I was young - but I feel like all I ever do is tell the story and it is tiresome to me.
SO ANYWAY.
I broke a tooth. Maybe I broke it about a month ago or more, I can't honestly remember. It was a molar and I broke it in half vertically, with the exterior of the tooth falling right off, leaving half a tooth in my mouth.
I thought it was a tooth I had previously had a root canal on, because I thought that ALL my molars have had root canals, and so I did nothing. I just figured, whatever. It's a dead tooth and I will have to pay for a new crown and I couldn't honestly be bothered making a dentist appointment for that right now.
Well I was mistaken. Although I never actually had pain IN the broken tooth, my whole face started to hurt. I thought I had bone cancer or something, Not ONLY because I am a partial hypochondriac, but because there was serious bone pain in my face.
Finally on Wednesday I was ready to pull a "castaway" and cut things out of my head with a skate blade if I couldn't have someone do something about the pain in my face. I started to take advil sometime last week for the pain. I estimate I have been taking pain killers for about 10 days. I think what actually clued me into how serious the pain in my face was, is the fact my gut hurt so bad from all the painkillers - which weren't working.
I was in a meeting at work on Wednesday morning. I could barely pay attention to the meeting I was in so much pain and I was sending Shel text messages asking her to please get me in to see a dentist. She was calling all over and having no luck at all. I was starting to feel like I was going to go insane from the pain.
She FINALLY was able to get me in to see a dentist in the next town first thing Friday morning.
I have been to see this dentist before and he is a decent dentist. I stopped going to him because he is VERY RELIGIOUS, and he acts in all these plays - always in the role of Jesus or Moses - and I was tired of being stuck in the chair listening to him rehearse his lines. I fondly refer to him as "Dr. Jesus". I didn't even care one iota that he was the only one available, I was in that much pain.
Thursday morning I drove to the dentist. I will spare you the gag-o-rific intimate details of the experience but I will say this. I was wrong. The tooth I broke had a root and I needed to choose between a root canal and an extraction. Let's see here.
Root canal.... $2500 bucks, three more dentist visits, and lets not forget - THE ROOT CANAL.
Extraction.... $200 bucks, no more visits to the dentist for this tooth in my life EVER.
Guess which one I chose?
The broken tooth has been removed.
There was excess bleeding. There was some puking of blood. There is some pain.
And so, If you have one more minute, please visit my favorite video of all time on youtube.
IT'S NOT FUNNY!!!!!!!
Showing posts with label dentists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dentists. Show all posts
Friday, June 3, 2011
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
dental dams
You may wonder why I am posting so much about dentists recently. Lucky soul that I am, I have had the fortune of seeing my dentist twice this week.
Before I go into the "meat" of this post, I need to make one quick comment. Dental dams should be used for one thing and one thing only. Can I get a "holla" from my lesbian reader?
My appointment this morning was at nine am. I had to drop off the boy at day care and make it to another town in time for this appointment which means I arrived sleep deprived. I sit in the chair and get tipped backwards until my body is almost vertical in the chair with my feet aiming at the sky. The blood is rushing to my brain and I am motion sick (Yes, I get motion sick in dentist chairs). The helper person comes in and puts a q-tip in my mouth with foul tasting junk to numb the spot where I will get a needle. This stuff tastes crappy and the needles still hurt so I don't fully understand it's purpose, but I go with it. Then the dentist comes in, shoves a needle multiple times into the inside of my face and leaves for half an hour. Do they "forget" to put you upright in the chair while they are waiting for the freezing to take effect or is it a dental strategy to leave you upside down?
After the blood has pooled in my brain the dentist returns, asks me to open my mouth and then says "Please move your tongue to the left". O.K. Seriously? I have a hard enough time distinguishing right from left when I am UPRIGHT and there has been no blood pooling in my brain and my body isn't frozen from nipple to hairline. How can one reasonably expect me to move my tongue AT ALL, let alone figure out which way is left? ( It might help if he said move the tongue to starboard!) I try to move my tongue and he puts into my mouth what I refer to as the door stopper. It is a piece of recycled semi tractor tire wedged into the back of your teeth so you can't shut your mouth while he is working, and he says "REST your teeth on this!" REST. My idea of the word REST involves some kind of relaxation. It's hard to REST anything when it is forced open beyond what nature intended.
I have been thinking about this a little more because I am somewhat glad that he gives me a piece of tire to "REST" on. Upside down and frozen makes it very difficult for me to perform simple tasks, like knowing if I am opening wide or clamping down hard. Sometimes if I am thinking about it too hard I end up doing the wrong thing - like clamping - even though I am THINKING "open, open, open". Another simple task I have difficulty with is breathing. I try to breathe through my nose because often the dental dam is restricting airflow or little bone chips are flinging into my throat and I choke. I also gag too easily if I am not concentrating on breathing through my nose. Unfortunately I have to CONCENTRATE on this because apparently the part of my brain responsible for breathing is frozen and/or flooded with blood.
To make this entire concentration process easier I keep my eyes shut through the entire dental experience. I can focus more easily on "open, open, open" and breathing through my nose if I am not looking at the reflection of the interior of my mouth in the dentists glasses or watching pliers and needles and drills being passed across my line of vision. To give a small example of what happens when this delicate balance of eyes closed, breathing, and opening my mouth is disrupted, let me explain what happened this morning.
I had my eyes closed and the dentist spoke to me. I was shocked, because normally he doesn't speak to me at all and my eyes popped open at the sound of his voice. I didn't completely register what he said as my eyes popped open, but as I opened my eyes I saw a PLUME OF SMOKE coming from my mouth. The shock of the plume of smoke made me forget to breathe through my nose and I took a deep breath through my mouth and inhaled a gob of smoke. When I inhaled the gob of smoke I started to choke and clamped down on the recycled tire and tried to sit up. As I tried to sit up the dentist pulled his hand back and removed from my mouth - A SOLDERING IRON. It was then I realized what he said. "I'm just going to cook some CRACK in your mouth, please don't open your eyes or breathe in".
Before I go into the "meat" of this post, I need to make one quick comment. Dental dams should be used for one thing and one thing only. Can I get a "holla" from my lesbian reader?
My appointment this morning was at nine am. I had to drop off the boy at day care and make it to another town in time for this appointment which means I arrived sleep deprived. I sit in the chair and get tipped backwards until my body is almost vertical in the chair with my feet aiming at the sky. The blood is rushing to my brain and I am motion sick (Yes, I get motion sick in dentist chairs). The helper person comes in and puts a q-tip in my mouth with foul tasting junk to numb the spot where I will get a needle. This stuff tastes crappy and the needles still hurt so I don't fully understand it's purpose, but I go with it. Then the dentist comes in, shoves a needle multiple times into the inside of my face and leaves for half an hour. Do they "forget" to put you upright in the chair while they are waiting for the freezing to take effect or is it a dental strategy to leave you upside down?
After the blood has pooled in my brain the dentist returns, asks me to open my mouth and then says "Please move your tongue to the left". O.K. Seriously? I have a hard enough time distinguishing right from left when I am UPRIGHT and there has been no blood pooling in my brain and my body isn't frozen from nipple to hairline. How can one reasonably expect me to move my tongue AT ALL, let alone figure out which way is left? ( It might help if he said move the tongue to starboard!) I try to move my tongue and he puts into my mouth what I refer to as the door stopper. It is a piece of recycled semi tractor tire wedged into the back of your teeth so you can't shut your mouth while he is working, and he says "REST your teeth on this!" REST. My idea of the word REST involves some kind of relaxation. It's hard to REST anything when it is forced open beyond what nature intended.
I have been thinking about this a little more because I am somewhat glad that he gives me a piece of tire to "REST" on. Upside down and frozen makes it very difficult for me to perform simple tasks, like knowing if I am opening wide or clamping down hard. Sometimes if I am thinking about it too hard I end up doing the wrong thing - like clamping - even though I am THINKING "open, open, open". Another simple task I have difficulty with is breathing. I try to breathe through my nose because often the dental dam is restricting airflow or little bone chips are flinging into my throat and I choke. I also gag too easily if I am not concentrating on breathing through my nose. Unfortunately I have to CONCENTRATE on this because apparently the part of my brain responsible for breathing is frozen and/or flooded with blood.
To make this entire concentration process easier I keep my eyes shut through the entire dental experience. I can focus more easily on "open, open, open" and breathing through my nose if I am not looking at the reflection of the interior of my mouth in the dentists glasses or watching pliers and needles and drills being passed across my line of vision. To give a small example of what happens when this delicate balance of eyes closed, breathing, and opening my mouth is disrupted, let me explain what happened this morning.
I had my eyes closed and the dentist spoke to me. I was shocked, because normally he doesn't speak to me at all and my eyes popped open at the sound of his voice. I didn't completely register what he said as my eyes popped open, but as I opened my eyes I saw a PLUME OF SMOKE coming from my mouth. The shock of the plume of smoke made me forget to breathe through my nose and I took a deep breath through my mouth and inhaled a gob of smoke. When I inhaled the gob of smoke I started to choke and clamped down on the recycled tire and tried to sit up. As I tried to sit up the dentist pulled his hand back and removed from my mouth - A SOLDERING IRON. It was then I realized what he said. "I'm just going to cook some CRACK in your mouth, please don't open your eyes or breathe in".
Monday, February 9, 2009
speaking in code
Dentists go to school for a lot of years in order to become dentists.
I think part of the time they spend in school is spent leaning to speak in crazy code. I say this because I have just spent two hours sitting in a dentist chair listening to this code. I don't think they want you to know what they are doing, and I also think that they need to talk in code so they can say things about you that you don't understand. I have heard before that police, coroners, and others with highly stressful jobs have a real morbid sense of humor so that they can deal with the horrors they deal with each day. I think this is the same for dentists. Who would want to sit in a chair, hunched over someone with rotten teeth and foul breath? We all know we don't go to the dentist when we are feeling particularly fresh. I only go when my face is about to fall off from pain. This pain is usually caused by some kind of infection. If you have ever happened to accidentally encounter infection in your life and smell it - it smells BAD.
So the dentists, as a way to deal with the atrocities they encounter daily, have come up with a code so you don't sit in the chair and hear them say things like " This fat cow can't even floss between her back teeth. Look at the size of this hunk of meat that just crawled out on it's own legs? It's green for heaven's sake!" What YOU hear is this: "The angle of the Armamentarium is preventing my view of the Interproximal stripping. Can you see the periapical from where you are? We are going to need to curitage the caries. I'm just going to have you backpack the DM of the 3 LMNOP."
It may work for some people, this charade of "dentist speak", but I have an online dentist dictionary and a great memory. I come right home and look that stuff up. I know you are talking about me over my lap!
I think part of the time they spend in school is spent leaning to speak in crazy code. I say this because I have just spent two hours sitting in a dentist chair listening to this code. I don't think they want you to know what they are doing, and I also think that they need to talk in code so they can say things about you that you don't understand. I have heard before that police, coroners, and others with highly stressful jobs have a real morbid sense of humor so that they can deal with the horrors they deal with each day. I think this is the same for dentists. Who would want to sit in a chair, hunched over someone with rotten teeth and foul breath? We all know we don't go to the dentist when we are feeling particularly fresh. I only go when my face is about to fall off from pain. This pain is usually caused by some kind of infection. If you have ever happened to accidentally encounter infection in your life and smell it - it smells BAD.
So the dentists, as a way to deal with the atrocities they encounter daily, have come up with a code so you don't sit in the chair and hear them say things like " This fat cow can't even floss between her back teeth. Look at the size of this hunk of meat that just crawled out on it's own legs? It's green for heaven's sake!" What YOU hear is this: "The angle of the Armamentarium is preventing my view of the Interproximal stripping. Can you see the periapical from where you are? We are going to need to curitage the caries. I'm just going to have you backpack the DM of the 3 LMNOP."
It may work for some people, this charade of "dentist speak", but I have an online dentist dictionary and a great memory. I come right home and look that stuff up. I know you are talking about me over my lap!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)