Whew! What a Day Was Yesterday!

My poor, dear husband's pickup broke down on the way to his interview. He had just fixed something on one wheel Wednesday, and on his way to this long awaited interview, the same darn thing broke on the other side! I was on my way to the dentist and of no help, and he was ready to give up. In the end he called a taxi which took him to the rental place, he rented a car and drove the two hours to his interview, for which he was half an hour late.

Had it been me I would have thrown myself at their feet begging mercy and prattling on about how my vehicle failed me and the fact that I'd walked across half of Reno to get the part and how nobody spoke english at the part store and they didn't have the part anyway and how I'd taken a taxi and ultimately rented a car to get there. Not so much my husband. He said "sorry, had some car trouble" and left it at that. He had called ahead of time so that's good. Anyway, it's a mine. That's a manly place, I'm sure they'll understand a fellow man of few words. In the end they let him interview, it went pretty well and we'll find out if he's hired next week.

Now back to my story. I got to the dentist and triumphantly pointed out the tooth I thought was dead and nodded with glee when he banged on it with some metal tool and it did indeed hurt.

Thanks doc, for not just taking my word for it.

Then he took an xray and we turned to watch the digital image pop up, certain it would display a horrendous black gas pocket of doom.

It did not.

It looked FINE.

My dentist looked at me in sadness and despair and I returned the look. Maybe his look was more frustration and impatience. I wouldn't blame him, this was getting ridiculous. Mine was definitely sadness and despair.

He explained that it sure sounded like that was the tooth, that sometimes they can be dead and it won't show up on xray, but without the xray backing it up, it was going to be a leap of faith. If he opened it up and the tooth was fine, we were still commited to doing a root canal on it, and I would be back to square one with the same pain I had before, plus the added bonus of a sore, previously intact and now root canaled tooth.

The decision was agonizing, the worst case scenario worse than I could ever imagine, but I knew I could not have a repeat of the previous night, and I would rather risk it all than leave that office knowing the pain of the previous couple of days was coming with me.

So I had him open it up. The numbing shots were nothing. I was super brave...and in heaven when they took effect. Then he drilled.

Then he said "do you smell that?"

I did.

He said my tooth was deader than a doornail.

And I rejoiced.

And he drilled and filled and I fell a little bit in love with every person on staff at Mark Funke DDS in Carson City, NV. To them much love.

Boone did not vomit even once last night, and I am living happily ever after with my dead, but not extracted, upper right canine tooth.

The End.

Part Three in the Dental Saga

So I got home last night and fell apart. This tooth pain achieved a whole new level. The dog had run off to his favorite place to run off to, the little old lady's house down the street. The little old lady swears she doesn't feed Fat Baxter, except maybe that one time she put food out for her cat and perhaps Fat Baxter got some of it. Ya think? Anyway, its our problem since its our dog and our fence that he manages to escape from, so we have to go collect him several times a week, which I was off to do.

I got to the door and bolts of pain radiated out of my FRONT TEETH this time. Up til now it has only hurt in the back, but this was coming from my upper right canine. I literally dropped to my knees, put hands over my face and tears just started falling. My poor Willie was a bit beside himself, putting his arm around my back "What's wrong Mommy? We have pink pills that can make you feel better" (these are his childrens pepto bismol tabs - inciter of many faked belly aches. He has supreme faith that they cure what ails ya. On the good side it was wonderful to see this caring side of my son. In the past, my tears have mostly made him laugh hysterically.

Anyway, it got better, I popped an 800mg motrin and that saw me through til 1am in just a low level of pain. At which time Boone vomited all over our bed for the second night in a row and then cried his eyes out as his poor little tummy churned and gurgled and I sat helplessly beside him, sobbing for my helplessness as well as my own little festering den of misery that was my mouth. Boonie finally got back to peaceful sleep but at this point my head was on fire and I wasn't due for another Motrin for another three hours. I repeatedly crammed crushed ice into my mouth and drooled it back out onto a towel, afraid to swallow lest it set of another shock wave. My dear dear husband has a big interview today and I'd planned to be very holly hobby about things and have the house in order and children taken care of so he didn't have to worry about anything but getting himself to the interview and showing them how wonderful he is. Instead he's up in the middle of the night comforting our screaming baby and crushing ice for me. I felt quite the failure.

This morning I asked him to take the kids to school as I am afraid to drive with them in the car in case I have some sort of even worse attack. I feel bad about that too. But I can't risk it and don't know if I can handle any other activity besides getting myself back to the dentist. I called this morning to get numbers for the endodontist, but apparently my dentist can do root canals on the front teeth, just not the multi-rooted rear teeth, so it will be nice to go somewhere familiar to be butchered. At this point I don't even care what he does as long as I can be drugged and when I come around this pain is gone. I may seriously be missing front teeth when I come home today - the bad one is connected to a fake tooth that fills a toothless gap left over from some reconstruction I had done about eleven years ago, so I'm not sure how that will be taken care of. Like I say, I don't care, vanity is the least of my concerns at this moment. If its really funny looking I'll post a picture for you all later.

Wish me luck

The Witty Dentist To The Quivering Patient: "It's All In Your Head"

Literally, get it? Ha ha!

Hypochondriac: A person who constantly believes he or she is ill or is about to become ill.

Psychosomatic: 1. Of or pertaining to a physical disorder that is caused by or notably influenced by emotional factors. 2. Pertaining to or involving both the mind and the body.

Went to the dentist this morning. My upper and lower teeth were pretty much in some degree of agony most of the day yesterday and during large chunks of last night. I didn't even enjoy eating my husbands birthday cupcakes I made of yellow cake drowned in duncan hines frosting. Didn't enjoy either one of them. Ahem.

Anyway, made haste to get to the dentist this morning, certain I would not be going to work as I would be recovering from what was sure to be a very complicated and involved dental procedure and that everybody would ooh and aah that I was even so tough as to have made it through the night with such evil residing in the right side of my head.

Well, damned if there was NOTHING on xray. And nothing he could SEE, except that my gums are terribly irritated and swollen! Apparently the evil in my head is actually in the brain portion rather than the physical portion. I'm so confused!

Bless my dentist he prefers to wait things out rather than charging in with unnecessary procedures (so un-medical professional of him I think!) so he says I should wait it out the next few days. I told him I'd eaten popcorn and he thought perhaps a piece of shell got stuck but then came out when I was flossing like a madwoman over the last couple of days. The pain I'm going through could be due to left over swelling.

Or I may have a virus that set up shop in there - he even mentioned the herpes virus and told me not to kiss my husband or kids for three weeks. WHAT!?! I've never even had a cold sore, how could that be! Not kiss my husband or kids?

Or he said he could send me to an endodontist who would likely tell me the same thing he did.

So great, there's nothing officially wrong. That's nice, no root canal is immediately imminent. But now I'm stuck still in this imaginary pain limbo where it really really hurts - I mean I would take childbirth pain over this pain any day, yet on paper it doesn't exist.

Makes me want to procede with my implausible but highly tempting idea of just having them:

A) Knock me out

B) Pull every tooth in my ever loving head

C) Replace them all with shiny, white, perfectly aligned implants.

I would then live happily ever after and in a million years they'd dig up my corpse and marvel at my pearly whites.

This Is Me Today:

Except I have more teeth, and I'm crying because a whole row or two of them hurt. Badly. The last time this happened, I stepped off of a C-141 onto the frozen sea in Antarctica and my head exploded. Or felt like it did, I'm not sure. I went on to numerous novacaine injections, hysterical tearful breakdowns, temporary crowns, and more novacaine, mercifully followed by 10 years of relative dental peace.

My dentist can't see me until tomorrow at 8:30am. So I am going live the next several hours in fear, praying that A) he finds something, and B) that whatever he finds is a simple and painless and cheap fix. Experience has shown me this is very rarely the case with all things dental.

I'll be sure to let you know how everything turns out.