Kristen's Dental Drama

I joke that I have had at least one of everything done to my teeth in the past ten years. I wasn't sweating the root canal or crown because I'd been through those before. I can handle the drills and the smell of tooth dust. The taste of numbing agents and cements is no big deal anymore. This should be a breeze...right?

On Thursday I hung out at the endodontist's office. He did my root canal and I was there for about two hours. It didn't feel too bad when he was doing it, but I had a hard time with my bite afterwords. The temporary filling wasn't a very good fit, and I would have a lot of pain on every tenth bite or so. Eating was not fun. I only had four days to go until my crown, so I toughed it out with a lot of Tylenol. A couple of beers didn't hurt either.

On Monday I went to my regular dentist for the crown work. I'll keep this post nice as not to scare the already timid dental patients out there. I will say that I never realized what a blessing novocaine was until Monday. I was dosed up pretty well, but it wore off half way through the crown work. The drilling was done, and they just had to make the temporary one and get the fit correct. Sadly I felt like I was going to go through the roof everytime the lady touched my tooth. It didn't make sense as I just had a root canal and there shouldn't be any root left to feel pain. The dentist had to come back in several times and give me three more doses of novocaine before I could sit through the last part of the procedure. I was fighting to keep from crying in the dentist's chair. I will praise Dr. Minyard though...he felt horrible for me and even followed me to my car to make sure I was really ok after I left. He was afraid that I'd leave his office with a fear of dentists. My bite is much better with this temporary crown, but my tooth still hurts. I don't think it's the gums (which they suggested it might be)...I'm wondering if the endodontist left part of a root in there. I'll give it a few more days to see if it subsides, but I'm a little nervous to say the least.

I go in for the permanent crown in a few weeks, and then for a regular cleaning the week after. No offense, but I am a little burnt out on seeing the inside of a dentist's office.