In October I bit down on a piece of walnut shell in my food and after 3 days of discomfort that got worse rather than better, I went to the dentist to have my tooth checked. Nothing serious was found. So I came home and in time it did get better. However, since then I've had intermittent pain in different forms in that tooth - sometimes on the surface, sometimes deep. Last weekend, it began hurting again - it woke me up around 3:00 am with a lot of pain, so when Monday morning came around I made a call to Peace Corps and asked for an appointment with the dentist.
I was on a bus to Sofia by 1:00 pm Monday afternoon (it's a 4 hour trip from my village) so I could be at a 10:00 am appt. the next morning.
Tuesday's x-rays (digital rays) showed
the demise of my tooth over the past 4 months. That process has been the cause of the off-and-on
again pain of the tooth and inflamation of the gum.
I
am usually pretty sensitive to dental work and when numbing is needed, I
ask for "extra" numbing. Today Dr. Dean made the suggestion
of not
using anything to numb because the tooth has died and there will be no
pain. At first I thought he was crazy but he explained everything so
well, that I trusted him enough to let him begin drilling with no
numbing. Guess what - he was right - no pain. That
was further evidence that the tooth had in fact died. Only toward the
end when he reached deeper into the tooth to the root canal nerve did I
feel a little twinge of soreness. From that point on he gave me a
child's dose of numbing agent to continue the
root canal process. It helped calm me and it would wear off more quickly than the adult dose. It was clear to me that this
root canal was the necessary next step for my tooth.
I
appreciate Dr Dean's thoroughness in his work and explanations of teeth
and care. His kindness and knowledge are truly reassuring to me as I
lay in my least favorite chair in the world with my mouth wide open!
It's Sunday night now, and I have been wonderfully happy all week with once again, having a pain-free mouth. No photos for this one! :>)
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