Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Daughter After Dentist

I had three cavities filled this week, and three last week. While it's true I do eat a lot of chocolate, that wasn't the reason; apparently, I have naturally deep teeth. Or at least, I did.

I went in to the dentist's a couple weeks ago for a check-up. I hadn't gone to the dentist's in a long while, and this was also my first time as an adult (I got to sign my own papers!). According to Mom, most adult go to the dentist's twice a year for a teeth cleaning, which seems a bit pointless to me, but as long as I'm still on her insurance I'll let her pay for whatever she wants to. This would be the first of my biannual visits, to get me familiarized with the system.

As they were taking X-rays and checking my teeth, the dentist noticed that they were very deep. I'm not really sure what that means, but it can't be too rare because he said his children had that too, along with one of my older brothers (Side note: I have four). He said it was a problem, and that they'd have to fill them in.

I guess I can see why it might be a problem, logically, but I also kind of felt proud of myself for being naturally different. Can't a girl feel proud about something? We made dates to get them filled right away, but part of me thought 'hey, do I get a say in this? Can we just skip this?' However, not being the paid professional, I deferred to his judgment.

So, last Wednesday they filled three teeth on one side. They're in the far back, so it's not extremely noticeable, but for about half a week my bite felt just the slightest bit lop-sided. On Monday, they finally filled in the other side, along with replacing an old silver crown that my pediatric dentist gave me years back with a temporary porcelain one (I go back in a couple weeks to get my final crown set on).

Several years back (I must've been around 12-15), I had a root canal, and these two experience were pretty much the same. They numbed the whole half of my jaw with a large scary needle (that I could luckily only half see), and poked and prodded at for quite a while. With the fillings, it only took about a half hour - for the root canal, it took two [exhausting] hours.

For anyone who's never had major dental work done, let me set your mind straight - except for the initial injection of painkiller, I felt pretty much nothing. For all I knew, they just kept pushing on my teeth. That's what made the root canal so exhausting - I lay there for two hours, trying desperately to stay awake while strange people in surgical masks messed with my mouth. Maybe I just have good luck with my dentists, but if you're feeling a lot of pain during your dentist visits, you should probably switch dentists.

Anyway, now my teeth are no longer deep. I guess that's great. Unfortunately, I have to go back this summer to get my wisdom teeth out. Wish me luck!

2 comments:

Christeigh said...

Mmmm, gurl, you so deep, the dentist can tell just by lookin' at yo' teeth.

Anonymous said...

From what I remember, I believe our family dentist is one of those high-end expensive kinds. That's why we've never hated our dentist visits. When mom and dad started with them a long time ago, they were super cheap, so they get the same deal they did back then.