An Eastern European root canal
There are few less fun things to do, than a root canal, I care not where you are in the world. But there is only one filling in my mouth that is less than 40 plus years old, and they are starting to simply wear out. I get it, these teeth have been with me a long long time and they have worked hard every day for almost six decades.
So about three months ago I had a tooth break, and today I found out that it actually was a filling that broke, not the tooth itself. And OK, so you really should not wait three months to get something like this looked at, but I don't have dental insurance and I can not afford an American dentist, and I have been traveling all over the world and been on the road for months. I ran out of excuses this month though, and was starting to have more and more pain in the "broken tooth" especially while flying which I do often, and so I set my appointment and went.
She immediately told me that the tooth wasn't broken, but the filling was and she need to dig it out and redo it. Of course here, anesthesia is used rarely, but I was already expecting this having had dental work done here before. So she dug right in (pun intended) and she drilled out the remaining part of this ancient filling. Then she found a cavity underneath. She drilled some more, deeper and deeper. My tension rose as the pain escalated. She finally ran out of tooth completely and saw that she was gonna have to do a root canal to do the job properly.
At this point she decided that some numbness would keep me from coming completely out that chair (although I still left her a nice puddle of sweat when it was all said and done), and likely messing up her fine dental work in process, and so I received the rare blessing of a numb face. There is so much more I could say about this experience that would grow hair on your chest, but I will refrain. The only two blessings were the total bill - $117.96 - and the hope that tomorrow that my tooth will not hurt nor be broken any longer. Next Wednesday is round two.
There are few less fun things to do, than a root canal, I care not where you are in the world. But there is only one filling in my mouth that is less than 40 plus years old, and they are starting to simply wear out. I get it, these teeth have been with me a long long time and they have worked hard every day for almost six decades.
So about three months ago I had a tooth break, and today I found out that it actually was a filling that broke, not the tooth itself. And OK, so you really should not wait three months to get something like this looked at, but I don't have dental insurance and I can not afford an American dentist, and I have been traveling all over the world and been on the road for months. I ran out of excuses this month though, and was starting to have more and more pain in the "broken tooth" especially while flying which I do often, and so I set my appointment and went.
She immediately told me that the tooth wasn't broken, but the filling was and she need to dig it out and redo it. Of course here, anesthesia is used rarely, but I was already expecting this having had dental work done here before. So she dug right in (pun intended) and she drilled out the remaining part of this ancient filling. Then she found a cavity underneath. She drilled some more, deeper and deeper. My tension rose as the pain escalated. She finally ran out of tooth completely and saw that she was gonna have to do a root canal to do the job properly.
At this point she decided that some numbness would keep me from coming completely out that chair (although I still left her a nice puddle of sweat when it was all said and done), and likely messing up her fine dental work in process, and so I received the rare blessing of a numb face. There is so much more I could say about this experience that would grow hair on your chest, but I will refrain. The only two blessings were the total bill - $117.96 - and the hope that tomorrow that my tooth will not hurt nor be broken any longer. Next Wednesday is round two.
