I’ve talked before about my hatred of going to the dentist — I think of dentists as a profession only slightly rooted in the scientific. (As an example, take Alex’s post about the varying dental opinions on the decaying properties of diet soda.) Consensus among dentists is something I have never seen in my life… particularly when it comes to MY teeth (which, let’s face it, is all I ultimately care about).
I haven’t always hated going to the dentist. In fact, my childhood dentist, Dr. Petkovich, was fantastic. He was easygoing, warm, and took a “don’t fix something that ain’t broke” attitude towards all things dental. He mentioned a few times that I *might* want to *think* about getting my wisdom teeth removed, but also said it was perfectly okay to wait until they started hurting. That’s my kinda strategy.
My distaste for dentists began the first time I went to a dentist other than Dr. P… and introduced for the first time a dissenting opinion. Life was great when I had one guy telling me what to do with my teeth; things became a lot murkier when I realized that for every dentist in the world, there is another opinion about what to do with my teeth.
Consider this: I had a dentist in college — I went to my college boyfriend’s dentist, big mistake there — SANDBLAST a cavity … only to have Dr. P tell me six months later that it was a shady at best dental treatment and that he wanted to do it over. {sigh} It’s freaking annoying.
Anyway, I’ve been on a quest since I came to Texas to find a dentist whose philosophy of dentistry relatively matches my own (don’t fix something that’s working). Praise Allah, I recently found such a thing in one Dr. Doores, one of the very, very few dentists in my dental plan network who doesn’t work for Monarch Dental (which I’ve tried, repeatedly, and always ALWAYS hated — please, never go there). My first dentist at Monarch puffed out his chest when I met him the first time and proclaimed the four baby teeth I still have — yes, I said baby teeth — would fall out “at any moment,” and that I should be prepared to spend — soon — a truckload of money on four implants. I thought that was insanely ludicrous; I was, at the time, 26 years old and those four teeth weren’t a smidgen loose. Why yank ’em out and put in implants? Geez.
That dumbass bastard jinxed me, though; I’m sure of it. Not six months later, while I eating at Chili’s one night, one of the four baby teeth decided to eject a very small bit of itself. In the intervening 18 months or so, the same tooth has slowly been eroding. My new dentist (who shares my dental philosophy, see above) told me last time I was there that, until it started hurting, I could just leave it be … but that it would start hurting eventually.
Damned tooth. It started hurting yesterday.
Now, I do recall that my wisdom teeth began to ache a bit several years ago, which was the stimulus that prompted me to have them taken out. But I swear, I don’t think they ever approximated this level of pain. It’s like someone’s got an ice pick (think small pointy tip) fixed on the middle of the gum where this tooth’s touching, and is constantly putting *some* measure of pressure on it, occasionally (just to mix things up a bit) exerting a little jab of extra force to remind me (as though I could forget) that it’s there. I spent most of the day yesterday running to the bathroom to apply Orajel to that particular gum spot with a toothpick (Qtips are too fat to make it there). That seemed to dull the pain a little (along with a steady stream of ibuprofen). I stayed vertical most of the day, though, so when I went to bed last night, whoosh! I don’t know if everything wore off at once or if it was the fact that my head wasn’t vertically above the rest of my body anymore, but the ice pick sensation quadrupled in intensity and I thought I was going to scream.
It’s moments like those that I genuinely feel grateful I also play occasional battle with an acute but bothersome case of TMJ (jaw ache). I say that because my doctor gives me (when I ask for it) a mild muscle relaxer and an anti-inflammatory drug that, in duo, will knock me out no matter what. Around midnight, I finally gave up on the “let’s wait it out — maybe it’ll go away” strategy and took the TMJ meds, washed my tooth with Orajel, and crossed my fingers. I must have blacked out shortly thereafter. 😉
So, it looks like another trip to the dentist is in my immediate future. Seriously, I was thinking this morning (before the pain woke up), “Hey, this isn’t so bad” … riiiiiiight. Not so much.
And I would just like to say, in my own defense (because I think I do a damned fine job cleaning my teeth), that this isn’t my fault. I grew up drinking well water (no flouride for me) and have had problems with my teeth my whole life. We hooked into the city water system when my brother was still very young, and so he’s never had the problems I have had with my teeth.
Not that any baby tooth — designed to last three or four years at most — should have ever lasted this long, anyway. I’d like to think the fact that all four lasted about 22-24 years solidly, and that three of the four are still in very good shape, is a miracle in itself.
So…. wish me luck. I hope Dr. Doores is willing to knock me out for the procedure. The guy (brilliant man) who took out my wisdom teeth gave me gas to relax me before he gave me an IV to knock me out. Now THAT’s what I call a dentist! 🙂
Hey, did anyone go to IKEA this weekend?