Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Clearly

Today, I went to the dentist. I go to the dentist a lot. I have a very positive attitude about the dentist, despite a few bad experiences and an overwhelming number of visits. This summer marks the beginning of the end of all my dental work, and it's looking to be a year-long tooth-a-thon.

So far this summer, I've had:

- 2 teeth drilled into
- 1 temporary cap placed (permanent will come in a week)
- 2 holes drilled into my jaws
- 2 posts driven into those holes
- 2 instances of numbing
- 4 stitches removed from my gums
- 4 prescriptions related to dental work
- 8 X-rays
- 7 different people stick their hands in my mouth
- 4 nightmares related to my teeth
- Around 8 hours sitting in a dentist's chair

It's been a month, but a lot had to happen all at once. After next week, it's all going to get chill until about August, when I have a final round of appointments to confirm scheduling and make sure my teeth aren't rotting from being in such a middling state of repair. And then it looks like this will all happen again this winter, and finish forever next spring.

My appointment today left me a bit traumatized. It was going to be a consult, but I ended up getting two of my molars drilled into for about three hours. Okay, that's a slight exaggeration. More like 2.5 hours of solid drilling. My teeth were chattering by the end of it. Normally I'm super lax about dental work. But I went from thinking I had a nice empty day to having two different procedures done at once. No chance to mentally prepare myself combined with the weird emotional state I've been in apparently leads to me getting shaken. I'm not feeling so hot at this moment.

I'll get over it and move on, but man. It was rough. I hope it never goes this way again.