Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Bread, Soup, and a Root Canal

To my knowledge, only Catholics,Lutherans,and Eastern Orthodox celebrate Lent. Every Wednesday during Lent, they hold a soup + bread supper. Representing simplicity. I wasn't raised Lutheran but my husband was, so tonight we went to a soup supper.

Perfect timing, really, because I now have a second reason to live off soup.(other then the gastro stuff) The ever-so-slight tooth pain that has been nagging me for a day and a half grew to epic proportions. I did not have a dentist,(yet) I had an appointment for a cleaning.(next week)But I knew I couldn't wait till then. I called them up and begged them not to let me die. And they said, how about now? and I was exceedingly grateful. My old dentist would have never squeezed me in. I put petal to the medal and rushed over there.

15 minutes later, they do an xray of the bottom right corner(that was fine), and an xray of the upper right. The dentist is a really nice guy, more personable then my last one(who I think I just never hit it off with, she just inflicted too much pain + seemed aloof no matter how much she tried not to) And this guy, well he was gentler.(that helped)He actually cared about how comfortable I was. While waiting on the results of the 2nd xray, he stuck a Novocaine needle in my gums to numb me up because it was obviously going to show something. Show something it did,a cavity around an existing filling(why do cavities like to grow in the exact same teeth??) necrosis, infection, a glorified mess. After telling me how much it would cost(around $700) he commenced to operating. Removed the cavity,the (dead)nerve, and put a temporary cap on it while the yuck drains. The infection was relatively minor so he didn't prescribe any antibiotics. But, unfortunately, because the yuck has to drain he couldn't do it all at once. So he'll put on the crown next week. More good fortune, dental insurance will cover most of it and it'll only be like $275.(I've had much, much, worse bills) And my blood sugar, despite the Novocaine, was absolutely perfect(106) afterwords.(another first)
So that's my first root canal..at the ripe old age of 26. I've got to work out a better cleaning system, because the amount of diet coke I consume is going to put me in dentures before I'm 40, at this rate.

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