Claudia’s Dental Saga: Episode 13
Today’s Good: I got to run underneath some more northern lights this morning. They weren’t as prevalent as the last time I saw them on a run, but they were there and they were green and they were calming.
Today’s Bad: That was
THE
MOST
PAINFUL
dental cleaning I have ever had in my entire life. It actually may have been the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced, period. I like to think I have a pretty high pain tolerance, but this evening’s appointment involved thirty minutes of them pressure washing the plaque off my teeth. Because I’m a bad human, I had like millimeters of plaque on/between a lot of my teeth and when the underlying tooth/gum was exposed, it was painfully sensitive.
I was crying, yo. And shaking. And hyperventilating.
I’m not going back unless my fucking teeth start falling out, sorry.
Claudia’s Dental Saga: Episode 12
I got absolutely SOAKED during my very rainy run this morning.
Was very cold for hours.
Then had to go to the dentist in the afternoon.
Riveting, I know, right?
(I don’t have anything fun to say today, sorry)
Claudia’s Dental Saga: Episode 11
In the never-ending saga that is “Claudia Mahler and the No Good, Very Bad Teeth,” I got the mold done for my crown plus a cavity filling.
Man, I remember when I was a kid and had absolutely NO teeth trouble.
But then I grew up and destroyed my teeth in a matter of about six months with a really bad habit and now they’re all awful.
Ugh.
Claudia’s Dental Saga: Episode 10
More dental crap today. Teeth were cleaned. Looks like I’ll need a crown on that broken tooth but won’t need a root canal on it.
Hooray.
(I know nobody cares. I don’t care either, but whatev.)
Claudia’s Dental Saga: Episode…9?
Dentist time.
Ugh.
So they weren’t able to do anything with the half tooth today, but they said as long as it’s not hurting, just be careful with it and chew on the other side of my mouth (which I can’t really do because I have a GAPING HOLE where that bridge needs to go…).
X-rays were done, though, and it sounds like they’ll be able to fix things next time I go in there.
I repeat: ugh.
Are My Teeth Made of GLASS??
So I lost a chunk of another one of my teeth this afternoon, YIPPEE!
Now I have to go to the freaking DENTIST, even though I should have already been going to the freaking DENTIST because I still need to get that bridge that I’ve been putting off since like September 2020 because I’m an adult who can handle the dentist.
(I cannot handle the dentist.)
At least it doesn’t hurt.
But ugggggggggggggh.
The Bridge to TeraTEETHia
(That’s a fucking horrible blog post title, sorry)
So when I had all that dental work done back in 2020 and they sawed off the outer part of that tooth and told me I needed to get the rest of it removed and a bridge put in its place, I asked them about the timeline of when that all should be done.
They said to do it within a year.
That was June (July?) 2020.
So clearly that didn’t happen, and that’s mainly because of all the COVID nonsense. Every time a wave died down, I wanted to wait a few weeks to make sure cases were SUPER LOW before going back into a place where I knew I couldn’t (for obvious reasons) wear a mask.
But each time I’d wait a little bit too long and another wave would start back up.
Now there’s omicron, and there’s no way in hell I’m going to the dentist during the omicron wave party that’s happening up here.
I don’t know what the point of mentioning that on here is, apart from maybe using it as a reminder to myself once I get these posted in, oh, late 2022 (optimistic date).
TEETH!
Claudia’s Dental Saga: Episode 8
SO…guess who’s back at the dentist?
(This is the eighth time since the end of May, by the way.)
And today was “let’s try to deal with that problem tooth again!”
I was really, really nervous about it, since it was so resistant to the novocaine last time.
But for whatever reason, everything went a lot better today. Apparently, according to my dentist, this is something that happens with some people. They have a region in their mouth that does not respond to novocaine during one visit, but when they come back sometime later, the novocaine is effective.
So at least it’s not just my mouth being a weird fart.
Claudia’s Dental Saga: Episode 7
So after the madness that was my dental experience last time, I had to go back today (YAY) to get even more cavities filled on the top left-hand teeth. Unlike the previous visits, during which I trusted the novocaine to numb the pain and thus wasn’t too concerned with the drilling, this time I was really freaking tense the whole way through, because I was afraid that at any minute, the novo would stop working and I would suddenly feel a drill going through my tooth.
But luckily, everything seemed to work out okay this time. Hopefully whatever is going on with that backmost upper tooth is just going on with that tooth and nowhere else.
Party time.
Well that was hellish. (Claudia’s Dental Saga: Episode 6)
So more dental work today. Today was supposed to just be cavities – not a root canal – so I figured it would be an easier time than the two previous dental visits, right?
WRONG.
I get there and I’m like “k cool let’s do this shit, I’m down with dental nonsense” and they give me two shots of novocaine – one to numb the upper left side of my mouth and one to numb the lower left side of my mouth. My dentist said she was going to do as many cavity fillings as she could in the time we had booked for my appointment, so I guess she wanted both the top and bottom ready (I have cavities in like every single one of my teeth because, as we’ve discussed, I’m an idiot).
So that all goes okay. HGTV is on the TV on the ceiling, so I’m just chilling and watching that while the meds kick in.
Then the dental assistant comes in and says she needs to put in a rubber dam. No big deal; I had that for both root canals.
So she goes to anchor it in my mouth (specifically, on my back upper tooth on the left side) and it HURT LIKE HELL.
Worse than anything involving the root canals ever hurt.
So I kinda freaked out and she took it out.
The dentist gave me another shot of novocaine for the top back row of teeth and they tried it again.
It HURT LIKE HELL.
By this time I was really freaking out because I didn’t know why it was so painful this time (I felt absolutely nothing the previous two times), so I got another shot of novocaine and both the dentist and dental assistant left for a bit because they could see that I was starting to panic and wanted to give me a second to calm down.
So did I calm down?
Nope.
By the time they came back I was in a full-blown panic attack. I was hyperventilating, my fingers were all tingly, I was super light-headed and I was just overall losing my mind.
Luckily, my dentist is awesome. She got a few of those heavy x-ray vests and put them on my chest to try to calm me down. She got the dental assistant to get some cold towels and put them behind my neck and head, then tilted the chair back to help with the light-headedness.
Eventually I stopped freaking out and said I was okay with them trying the whole rubber dam thing again. FIVE MORE SHOTS OF NOVOCAINE LATER (we’re up to nine shots total now), I was still feeling the pain of the clamp on that tooth when they tried to put it on. So they were finally like, “screw it, we’ll just work on the bottom teeth today” and they put the dam on the lower teeth (I didn’t feel it at all) and did four cavity fillings before my appointment time was finally up.
So yeah, super fun.
Oh, also? Calgary got put under a tornado watch as I was walking home and I got caught in a serious rain/hail storm that soaked through my shoes, socks, pants, shirt, and backpack.
Freaking party time.
Edit: I didn’t know how these rubber dam things were actually anchored in the mouth until I looked it up a few days later. It must have been that clamp thingy that hurt so badly.
Take care of your teeth, children
Or else this will happen.
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