Today I had a ROOT CANAL!

It…actually wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I had a different dentist this time (though she was really good as well). She tried to root canal the broken tooth but said that it was so weak that it wouldn’t support the root canal, so she sawed off whatever was left and now I have a weird tooth gap in the side of my mouth and a funky-feeling little empty gum socket (the tooth is still in there beneath the gum line, but I can only feel a little spike of it sticking out). She was able to do the root canal on the other tooth, though, so that’s good. Now I either need a tooth implant or a bridge where the missing tooth once was.

But yeah, not too bad. I was mostly nervous about 1) getting the novocaine, since that required needles in my gums, and 2) the pain after the procedure was done. But the needles only stung a little bit and the pain I had in the afternoon wasn’t bad at all, either. The only real side effect I had was some SUPER BAD SHAKING as the novocaine set in, but apparently that’s normal.

In fact, the root canal pain was less severe than the normal pain my mouth has been in for the past year or so. Which I guess tells you a good deal about the level of pain my mouth has been in for the past year or so.

Hell, I did 15 miles on my treadmill when I got home after the procedure.

Wicked.

The next step? Getting an actual dental cleaning, since it’s been like 12 years since that’s happened.