matt's boring

matt's adventures in dentistry, part the first

Monday, September 18, 2006

So today was the big day, the examination to determine the root (pun intended) cause of my recent jawbone pain. Yay for missing the first half of my work day though!

So 10:00 sees me arriving at the office and sitting down to fill out 3 pages of questions. The receptionist asks me if I want anything to drink. My first response is to ask for coffee, but my brain quickly overrides my mouth when it realizes that some guys face is going to be quite near to my mouth, and I ask for water. Receptionist graciously delivers a bottle of water, which goes unopened on the table beside me as I fill out said forms. While filling out said forms, I happen to watch through the glass doors to the dentist side, and notice the cute assistants. Frowning to myself that one of them is going to be exposed to my mouth, I turn my attention back to the clipboard on my lap and finish answering the questions (Do you have a venereal disease, do you have HIV, do you have AIDs, etc). Said forms are handed in, and return to my seat to wait.

A few minutes later, the cutest of the dental assistants walks out and introduces herself, and another girl who will 'be helping'. I wonder aloud if I should be worried that it'll take two assistants to Xray me, which draws a chuckle. I'm walked back to the big stand-up head Xrayer. I'm told to step into it and bite onto the little plastic-bag covered piece of plastic. Once I'm in there, the cute assistant starts telling the other one what she needs to do, and I realise the other one is in training or something. So, awkwardness ensues while I'm standing in the machine and she moves it around to get it properly set up, while the cute one is right in there pointing at my face and telling her how to correctly position the machine. Shortly thereafter (or abouts) my head is blasted with X-rays for 15 seconds, after which I'm allowed to step out, and shown into an exam room.

Taking a seat on the chair (I'd like one of those for my living room, they're damn comfortable, and recline-y!). The cute assistant swings a computer monitor around the chair infront of me, and shows me my x-ray on it. Now, prior to coming into the office I thought the pain might have been caused by 1 of 2 things. A) my wisdom teeth pushing on the teeth in my lower jaw thereby causing pain, or 2) a cavity. One glace at my x-ray revealed the cause. A nice big black mark on the tooth in pain. I remember from school (I think?) about how cavities show up as black marks on x-rays.

The dentist then comes in and we make a bit of small talk about the shitty weather. He then asks me what's wrong, and I tell him that it looks like I have a pretty big cavity there. So he goes into my mouth with that pick and starts picking around. Turns out that a filling I got some years ago was applied poorly, and ended resting up against the tooth next to the one filled in. This prevented me from being able to floss between them, or brush between there adequately. This allowed a cavity to form and fester. Now granted, I probably should have gone in earlier, but that's neither here nor there.

So bottom line is, that at least I need a root canal done, with possibly a cap. I may also need some sort of surgury called 'flap surgery'. Which, to my understanding involves cutting into the gum from the side, going in between the twin roots of a molar, and cleaning out an infected area. Now that sounds like fun.

The good news is that he didn't say anything about removing my wisdom teeth, except that one might have a cavity... Well, stupid me decreased my dental coverage from 80% to 50% this July, during the annual period where I can change my benefits. So I'm going to get the root canal done ASAP (October 10th actually, $850), and the rest can wait until next year, after I jack my dental coverage up to 90%.

I had asked if I could be provided a copy of my x-ray, but was denied as they told me it was a proprietary file format. I was hoping to have it for this post.

I was going to address this news story in this post, but I think it's long enough and shall save it for another day.

posted on Monday, September 18, 2006 at 10:20 p.m.. There are . If you want, you can leave your own response by clicking here. You may also send this post to a friend of yours via email, or bookmark it for yourself by using icons below;