The ROOT of the Problem

When I was 12, I got braces.  Something about my teeth being crooked.  Yeah, they were pretty ugly, and come to find out, it was because one of my bicuspids was embedded in my hard pallet.  Needed to be chained and pulled down.  Oral surgery.  Tons of fun.  Not.

Years later, the tooth next to it starts hurting, randomly, about three weeks ago.  I was sure I had a cavity or something, until I looked in the mirror and saw it was kinda turning pink.  Google told me that meant it was rotting inside.  Well, great!  How the heck did that happen???  I don't even chew things, and it was a front tooth, I mean, come on!

So, I went to the dentist, which I already blogged about, but he told me to come back because that tooth was probably going to need a root canal (along with my broken one in the back, lucky me).

And yesterday morning was the day, I had been dreading it all week.  I have severe anxiety about being numbed, and having other people poking around in my mouth.  The dentist was like, ok, we're going to get started on that back tooth.  And thinking I was sneaky, I was like, well, the front one is the one that's actually bothering me, can we start with that one?  (real reason?  I'm too scared to have him messing around that far back in my mouth.  Stupid I know, because it's going to happen eventually, but start out gentle I guess......)  Which of course he was fine with.

But you know what?  It actually was better that way.  Once he got in there, he stopped and was like, well, I can't see the canal at all, I don't even know if it is there, the nerve is almost entirely calcified, and the root is half eaten away.  That didn't sound good.  "I might need to send you to a specialist.....but let's just see what we can do."  So, an hour, 5 drills, lots of numbing medicine and grinding later, my tooth was sealed up with a substance intended to stop the eating away.  I have to go back in two months to have the root canal finished.

The ROOT of the problem?  I asked if it had to do with poor dental hygene or something.  And the dentist was like no, it's due to trauma.  That tooth got injured and damaged somehow and has been "dying" since.  Ah, lightbulb.  I told him about my oral surgery for my biscuspid and how it had been embedded all funny in my hard pallet. His theory?  The bicuspid was invading the root space of my problem tooth, and then it suffered trauma in the surgery.

Well, that made me feel better.  Basically, the poor tooth was doomed from the start.  Unfortunately, it's almost dead, so hopefully this medicine and root canal works or I'm going to have to shell out a buttload for an implant.  No way in heck I'm going to go all rednecky with a gap in the front of my mouth.  And I have to have the rest of the work done two weeks after a C-section........yeay.