The Damage

I survived my dental encouter this afternoon. The damage is not as bad as I thought it was going to be. Today they just did x-rays, an exam and a cleaning and came up with a game plan. I don't need a root canal after all. Woohoo! I'll go in twice. Once for a partial crown and two fillings and then again for two small fillings on the other side. One of them is a tooth that I have a filling that I got in the fifth grade that's starting to fall out.

After all that, I'll see about getting my wisdom teeth pulled. Two of them have very small cavities. Because of my apprehension and the fact that they have long roots that are very near the nerve, the dentist will probably refer me to an oral surgeon. I'm ok with that; I'd rather not remember anything at all about that experience. The hygenist was saying we want to get this other work done first because people typically don't return to the dentist until one year after having wisdom teeth pulled. Not necessarily because it hurts, just because they'd rather not have someone messing around in their mouth for awhile after. So....I'm betting on five years for me :)

This dentist's office was so nice. Nicely decorated, high tech all the way. She would take an x-ray of a tooth and it would show up on the screen in front of me. She took pictures of all of my teeth, and they came up on the screen for me to see, also. I could see just how terrible some of them looked. I'm like, "Ooooh, that one doesn't look good." And then the one of my crown came up and it looked really pretty. So I said, "But hey, that one looks nice!" All of the staff was great and so understanding about the apprehension and non-judgemental about me waiting so long to come in. That's part of the reason I put it off, I hate being lectured about it. But no more; I'm setting a good example for Clara from now on and will be a regular at the dentist office.