Survived yesterday’s dentist trip and came back with 2 new fillings and 1 less tooth. In Oregon in 2005, the 4th upper tooth from the center broke up, leaving just a little shard that turned a sickly shade of green. I thought it was dead. Had I known the sucker was still partly alive and would take an hour to pull I’d have been shitting bricks! Part of that was because it was broken and there wasn’t much to grab onto. They gave me Valium cuz the Novocain caused me to be jittery. So, a happy pill is a must when given Novocain!

It wasn’t nearly as torturous as when the county pulled tooth #18, which is what was pulled, according to the tooth numbering chart I looked up after reading what numbers they worked on that were written on a print-out of the account history. But it took forever! It took an hour for the fillings and another hour to make the pull. When I asked her how long it would take to pull it and she said she didn’t know, I thought, uh-oh! So after the fillings were in it was on to one hour of tugging, digging and drilling. This was the 7th tooth I’ve had to have pulled. My wisdom teeth all let go in seconds. The impacted baby tooth took just a few minutes. But the last two just didn’t want to let go!

They ended up giving the next patient a Starbucks GC cuz of how long it took to work on me. LOL, I always did say I was meant to profit others.

We only had to pay $106 for what came to $488 of dental work.

So now that the left side is done (except for the bridge that’s going in when my gums heal), next week they’ll tackle the right side and replace old fillings. That drill is absolutely deafening even to me. The staff is super nice, though. Oh, yeah, they just loved my funky nails and thought I was so “cute.”

I’m surprised they worked on #10. #19 had the super huge cavity and #12 was pulled, but I thought they worked on #13. The Novocain and happy pill worked really well seeing that I couldn’t tell where they were working. I asked why they hadn’t done the big cavity and they said they just did, LOL. It would’ve eventually become infected like the other one did. I didn’t keep waking up in pain like I did after the county pulled the infected one and I haven’t had to take anything since I got up. As long as I don’t bite down too hard, cuz the gums ache over there, I’m fine.

I had to bite down on gauze and put an ice pack on my swollen face for the first few hours after we returned home at around noon. I have to go back on the 19th for a checkup, plus whatever else they want to do at that time. I’m so glad I’m FINALLY getting this over with!

They were training a young girl who oversaw the extraction. It was the first one she’d ever seen. I asked if it grossed her out and she said no, she wasn’t usually grossed out by that sort of thing. That’s good cuz Tom would’ve passed right out on the floor, LOL.