Gnash Gnash

The other day, as I bit into a rather yummy tuna baguette for lunch, a small piece of the edge of one of my front teeth decided to join the bread and fish and disappeared down my throat. It was noticeable enough to need repair so off I went today.

My lovely dentist kindly reminded me I hadn't been in for a year (well I had, but only for my routine clean and polish) so he said let's do an examination and see how things are. Well, drat, he only managed to find a large crack in an old filling and decided today is the day to deal with it.

In went two injections, into the gum and inside cheek, top right. And while those were settling in he fixed my little chip. Good as new on the front teeth. He then went to work on excavating the large filing right at the back. Way at the back. I don't have the biggest mouth on the planet (no cheap shots from the peanut gallery, please) so it took some doing to get fingers and drill right back in there. It's not something I particularly enjoy but I was feeling no pain, only anxiety. I always feel anxiety at the dentist, I had some horrific experiences as a child.

Buzz buzz buzz...vibrations running through my jaw and then I tasted it. Blood. And lots of it. He suddenly stopped and asked his assistant for gauze and started to pack my mouth. I'm thinking okay that was a deep filling. More gauze. And more. He raised the chair to upright and, with his hand on my shoulder, told me he'd nicked the inside of my cheek with the drill. My tongue explores but naturally can't feel anything so I smile and say no problem. He lowers the chair again and unpacks the gauze and I see all the blood. My eyes widen and he puts some sort of semi-rigid disc between my jaw and cheek and proceeds to continue on with the tooth. I seem to absorb Novocaine at an unusually fast rate so it was soon time for another two injections. I didn't feel them at all though.

An hour and a half later I'm good to go, he's thrice washed out the inside of my cheek with some noxious tasting concoction and applied a glob of something in there. He advised me not to eat on that side for the rest of the day (thanks, it's my eating side) and to rinse with warm salty water this evening. He did have a slightly worried expression on his face but I still couldn't feel a thing with my tongue.

Now, the numbness has gone and my tongue has been exploring and oh.my.god there is a bloody great hole in my cheek! I can feel a definite pit with the tip of my tongue and the pain is awful. I've just downed 800mg of Ibuprofen and it still hurts. And I mean HURTS. Plus the outside of my cheek is bruised and I resemble a one-sided-ready-for-winter-chipmunk. If I get an infection in there I'm going to be well displeased. Plus my follow-up visit is in a week, to replace the temporary crown with the permanent crown. I can just imagine the anxiety at that visit. I don't think Novocaine is going to do the trick, somehow.

P.S. That is not my x-ray but would be pretty close to mine, except my wisdom teeth were removed a while back.

OUCH. Again.