Tooth Despair & Agony-ony

No insurance on me anymore,...means limited visits to the dentist. Bad childhood experiences at the dentists office....means limited desire to visit any more dentists! The end result: I don't see a dentist as often as my teeth need for me to. I can't help that,...so I do the best I can.

That leaves me open for problems sometimes, and recently I had just such a problem- a broken tooth. I needed it fixed, but didn't have resources available for a good long while. So time went on and sadly, another tooth got affected by the problem.

This past Monday, I was fortunate enough to get some help (thanks Mom!) in getting those 2 teeth taken care of. They had to be pulled, so I tried my best to put my big girl panties on and get it done. I was so nervous Monday that I spent more time in the bathroom than I did anywhere else that morning! I got in the room and the nurse person asked how I was doing. NERVOUS! So she gave me that gas. I guess its nitrous oxide? I don't know,... its that stuff they call "laughing gas", and they don't call it that because YOU laugh while on it,...its because THEY laugh at YOU while you are on it. I've had it once before, and when I told the nurse back then about the hair growing from the ceiling, she reduced the gas level and took all the pleasure out of that experience.

So I'm laying in the chair with my nose covered up with a mask and hoses. I could hardly keep my eyes open, and since it seemed like the florescent lights overhead were changing colors, I went ahead and closed my eyes and wished to fall asleep. Then in comes the nurse and dentist. He put gadgets in my mouth, and at one point I felt a needle in my cheek. A moment later, I felt him shove another one into the roof of my mouth. THAT HURT! I only felt the 2 needles, but I learned later that he put 4 in. That's good! I missed 2 of them :) So then it was time to sit and go numb.

At one point, I started to spin in my chair. I got so dizzy I had to open my eyes. That stopped the spinning, but my eyes were so heavy I had to close them again. I thought I was shaking, so I held my hands over my face to see if I was. I couldn't open my eyes to see them though. Oh well!
I figured I should just relax and let the stuff "take me away", so let my hands rest beside me. But I had nothing to lay my hands on, so when they rested at my sides, they actually fell to the floor and went limp. I'm sure I looked dead laying there in that chair.

Sometime later, they came back, gave me one more shot I didn't feel and started to pull one of my teeth. The dentist used a tool that felt like pliers and he tugged,....and tugged....and tugged,.... and twisted and pulled and yanked.... That tooth wasn't budging! He finally got some tool that sounded like a drill and started cutting that tooth apart. He got down into the gums and cut the root into pieces. Then he pulled out the bits and hoped there weren't any bone shards left behind!

When all that drama was over with, the nurse person switched my gas to oxygen. She said it would only take about 5 minutes to get me back to normal. Oh how wrong was she!? I could hardly get the muscles in my legs to work! They were shaking the whole time I walked, and Mama walked me out as if I were a little old lady bad hips. Because they cut the one tooth out, they gave me some pain pills. We went to a pharmacy to pick that up, and I still didn't have strength in my legs to walk through that store. I stayed in the car while Mama got it! During that time, my legs seemed to just "wake up" and I felt more normal again,...except for the wadding in my mouth keeping me from talking and just barely absorbing all that spit I kept making and not swallowing. What a day!

And the dentist was right about the pain. Today its pretty bad! he gave me a refill on the pain meds, but its a controlled substance, so pharmacies don't refill those. Doctors have to write new scripts for them. Guess what? The dentist is in Tennessee and I'm in Georgia,...so I don't get the refill (darn!) which means I'm trying to go easy on them so they last me a little longer.

The thing is, I'm 39 years old. Aren't I a little old to be such a big baby? Or did I have too much fun at the dentist office? I don't know which!