The phrase that strikes fear into all adults who hear it.
This has been an extremely bad year dentally for me. First my lower left baby premolar gave up the ghost, necessitating getting it pulled and replaced by an implant. Then in April my top right second-from-the-back molar started getting sensitive to cold. Several attempts over the months by my dentist to repair the underlying problems (bad filling, crack, exposed root—yes, I abused my teeth when I was a kid) were fruitless. The tooth just got worse and worse; and finally, after almost a week of excruciating pain (couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep), today I went to the endodontist to get the dreaded root canal.
Actually, after the buildup, the root canal itself was almost completely painless. I barely felt the anesthetic injections (all four of them). At the beginning there was a second of mild discomfort; that was the endodontist pulling out the remnants of the tooth’s pulp, most of which was already dead. After that I didn’t feel a thing, which made me mightily relieved. The procedure was long (two hours) and labour-intensive for the endodontist (lots of scrubbing the inside of the tooth with long, tiny files).
As the anesthetic wore off, however, I felt as though I had been run over by a truck (and note that the only other time I’ve ever used that simile was when I gave birth). It was worse than before the root canal; every part of my head hurt and all I could do was to try to become one with the couch and whimper. Poor Peter.
Now, several hours later, the Advil and Tylenol seem to have kicked in and hopefully I’ll be able to keep the pain under some semblance of control until the inflammation goes down. And maybe tomorrow I’ll be able to eat something more substantial than porridge.
No comment yet
Laura says:
September 25, 2007 at 4:40 pm (UTC 0)
Nope, still on liquid diet. Couldn’t even eat macaroni for lunch for the pain. Guess it’s soup tonight!
Peter says:
September 26, 2007 at 12:13 am (UTC 0)
Poor Peter nothing. I’m not the one in pain.
Tamiko says:
September 26, 2007 at 1:42 pm (UTC 0)
Tamo had his tonsils out a week ago and is just now getting back on his feet. Getting marble sized chunks taken out of the back of your throat at 17yrs is not minor surgery! We all sympathize with you — the number of nerves in the head means you suffer way more pain than say a broken leg. I guess with teeth it means you can’t eat popsicles or ice cream?
Laura says:
September 27, 2007 at 11:23 am (UTC 0)
Today (Thursday) is the first day that I’ve been feeling more-or-less human—I was finally FINALLY able to eat a decent lunch without too much discomfort. As for ice cream and popsicles, dunno yet, but I definitely couldn’t eat them before the root canal; I’ve been having cold pain with the tooth for months. I think it’d be ok now.
hyedie says:
September 27, 2007 at 1:17 pm (UTC 0)
hi laura! it’s duke’s mum, hyedie, from who’s walk who.
i had a root canal too, but just before i went back to get my crown put onto the root canal tooth, i cracked the tooth! and then had to get the cracked root canal tooth extracted and have an implant placed!
so becareful of crunchy peanut butter until you get your crown!!
hope you are feeling better 🙂
Laura says:
September 27, 2007 at 5:28 pm (UTC 0)
Ugh, Hyedie—that’s got to be the ultimate in dental one-upmanship. Root canal AND implant in the same tooth? Holy cow that sucks!
Laura says:
September 30, 2007 at 10:59 pm (UTC 0)
And after Word on the Street today we walked over to Greg’s Ice Cream for a treat…Yaaay, I can eat ice-cream without any pain now!