Tuesday, July 04, 2006

lishun gets a root canal, parts 2&3

you know you're a hopeless blogger when you've got a dentist drilling your teeth with goodness-knows-what and putting strips of whatchamacallit into your clean, empty root canals (yes all freaking four of 'em) and all you can think of is "damn, i didn't bring my camera. this would be good blog material."

o_O"

anyway, am highly apologetic for not blogging about phase two of lishun's root canal, but that was because it was really boring. as in literally, it was bore-ing. the dentist bore and bore into the canals of my first-molar-on-the-bottom-right-jaw to remove whatever's left of the stuff that kept my tooth alive, filled it up again with the foul-tasting calcium...stuff, and sent me home.

in 20 minutes.

i love this dentist. she doesn't believe in prolonging my distress and, as the students of imu learnt yesterday, "every patient is in distress; it's up to you to detect it." wise words indeed. i was in alot of distress and hardly winced.

well, ok fine i did wince during the second treatment. you see, when the roots of your teeth are clean, it only makes sense that the hole at the bottom of the canal, where your formerly alive nerves and blood vessels crawled into the tooth, actually leads to your gums. and your gums are usually very much alive, laden with pain receptors that are ever ready to make you wish you were dead should they ever get stimulated.

the freaking dentist i just praised a moment ago prodded and poked with this small, sharp, scary file thingamajig into one of the canals, poked my gums and sent a sharp, excruciating pain (hah, characteristic and quality of pain!) through my brain.

all the dentist did was nod her head and say, "yes, there is a sharp pain when i hit your gums." i was thinking, "bloody hell...first you don't tell me that there's gonna be pain, then you tell me that you knew you were gonna hit my gums?! don't freaking hit my gums then!!!" and i'd have said it too if i didn't have a small, sharp, scary file thingamajig sticking in my mouth at the time.

bleh.

ok otherwise it went well without much event.

yesterday was my final consultation for the root canal. the dentist was supposed to fill the canals and shape me a new, permanent 1/4 of a molar to cover up the gaping hole that was there 2 weeks ago. this time it wasn't so bore-ing, although she unbelievably poked that file thing down my root canals again, and i was out of the office half an hour later.

yesterday's procedures involved inserting strips of harder material (previously my teeth were dressed with strips of paper dipped in antiseptic - talk about simplicity) into the vacant canals and the moulding a hard filling into my tooth.

the moulding was weird. the dentist first inserted this big metal thing that kept my mouth open - dentists are so totally the descendants of torturers from the middle ages - and then scraped filling onto my tooth, shaped it, and then hardened it by using what looked like a mini hairdryer with a bent nozzle. it emitted, erm, blue light.

seriously. i had a hairdryer shining light in the most beautiful shade of blue i've seen into my oral cavity. it was...interesting.

well apparently the blue light causes the filling to harden and smoothen into an enamel-like material and the irritatingly smooth stuff is now sitting in my mouth. it feels like there's a constant layer of mucous on it and it disturbs me everytime i run my tongue down my teeth. like algae's growing there. or some commensal has turned pathogenic. or something along those lines.

ooooooookay.

the conclusion is that lishun's root canal is done (yay!) but it feels kinda weird (boo!) although she's really happy that she doesn't have to see the dentist for the next 3-6 months (yay!) unless of course the filling, which exudes foul-tasting calcium-like stuff when she bites on it, decides to malfunction (boo!).

ok. the end. i need to go back to differentiating infective endocarditis and rheumatic fever. bye.

lishun at 8:18 AM

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