"Dentists and Dragons - Chapter 4" by Troy H. Cheek on Mar 16, 2005

(If you missed Part 3, go back and read it first!)

I had a bad tooth. Dentist #1 no longer took my insurance and recommended that I go to another dentist in town. Dentist #2 thought the tooth needed pulled, but wasn't actually certified to pull a tooth, so referred me to another dentist. Dentist #3 thought I needed a root canal and sent me to Dentist #4. I ignored all of them and picked Dentist #5. Then I argued with my insurance company until they agreed to pay for him.

"How are we doing today? No pain? That penicillin do the trick?" Dentist #5 bellowed in a friendly voice.

Doing good. No pain. Still had most of those painkillers he prescribed left.

"But you haven't used any today, right?" he asked almost frantically.

No, of course not. Only needed those the first few days. After that, I got by with over the counter pain stuff.

"But you haven't used any today, right?" he asked almost frantically.

No, I had not. Sheesh. If I was in pain, I would have told him.

"Okay, then. Hand me the topical."

I was about to ask what a topical was and why did I need to hand him one, when the assistant handed him a giant Q-tip looking thing. He stuck the Q-tip on my jaw near my bad tooth and, after a few seconds of stinging, a nice numbing sensation radiated out from it. It had a nice strawberry taste. "Tastes kind of like that baby teething jelly I was using last week."

"Yeah," Dentist #5 said. "When a tooth starts hurting, you'll use almost anything for a little relief." Suddenly, a look of horror came across his face and he yanked the Q-tip out of my mouth. "But you haven't used any today, right?" he asked almost frantically.

No, I had not. The whole reason I had come to him in the first place was because I was in pain. It's not like I was going to start hiding it from him now.

After another minute or so of Q-tip, he asked the nurse for the needle. I was getting some kind of caine-type medicine (whatever the latest replacement for novacaine was). He told me but I was too busy staring at the needle to listen. "You might feel a little pinch."

Actually, it was just a little pinch, or a series of them, as he shot sevaral cc's of whatever it was into the hinge of my jaw. He said that it would take effect in a few minutes and he'd be back. I could hear him bellowing as he went down the hallway, and eventually decided that he was doing at least two other root canals today.

As my tongue started to tingle, I remembered the dentist I had growing up, and what he'd tell me as he was injecting the novacaine. "You might feel a slight stinging sensation. Or you might feel like you've been kicked in the face by a mule. Midge, you'd better hold him."

"How does that tongue feel?" Dentist #5 bellowed as he walked by the door. I told him I'd apparently had half my tongue cut off, because I couldn't feel a thing. "Good! Good! I'll be back in a few minutes." I heard him asking the same thing to the other patients down the hall. He came back and asked me about my lips, and I gave him the same answer. "Good! Good!"

After making the rounds, he came back and said that we'd have to deaden another set of nerves. No problem. Injection. Another injection. Then suddenly I'm coming up off the chair.

"Ah, nurse, can you get me another needle? This one is getting a little dull."

It actually was little more than the pinch I'd felt earlier, but coming from the middle of all that numbness, it was enough to get me attention. He went off to stab his other patients with dull needles. I eventually got the assistant to quit patting my shoulder and go help him with the others.

After a few minutes, I couldn't feel much of anything on that side of my face. All was well. Then the assistant came in and asked if I could fill out a few forms while I waited. Sure thing. I signed the consent to treat and read the info about sedation and painkilling. "Excuse me. Did I just sign a form agreeing to let you shoot my mouth full of painkillers?"

"Um, yeah."

"Shouldn't I have signed that, oh, I don't know, BEFORE you shot my mouth full of painkillers?"

"Um, we're running a little behind today."

"Let's try not to skip any more steps today, okay?"

"Okay."

The dentist came in and unwrapped a little rubber sheet. "This is a dental dam. We're going to clip it around your tooth and it's going to keep the rest of your mouth clean while we work."

"I know what a dental dam is, doctor," I told him. "I've just never used one for actual dental work before."

This was apparently the wrong thing to say, as the assistant blushed and had to leave the room for a few minutes.

The actual procedure was, from my side, fairly anticlimactic. Sure, I could SEE the dentist coming at me with various pointed metal things, I could HEAR the clanking and drilling, but I couldn't actually FEEL anything. Which was a good thing. I just laid back and watched the ceiling tiles while I had a root canal.

Technically, "had a root canal" is incorrect. It's like saying you went to the mechanic and had a transmission. It's actually called a root canal treatment or root canal therapy (RTC). After drilling out my tooth a little (not much, as the huge gaping hole was the reason for the treatment to begin with), he dug out my three infected roots, and widened the holes with some little cone-shaped files. I was still numbed to within an inch of my life, so I didn't feel a thing and was actually amused by all this.

Then came the cleanup. I wondered what the dentist was doing with that huge syringe with the curved needle. Surely, I was wasn't getting more painkillers? I heard a grating noise and watched as the dentist twisted the syringe back and forth. Then I realized that he was putting the needle actually down into the root canals of my tooth. I tried to come up off the chair again, but they held me until I settled down. Back came the needle, first with water to flush things out, then with some medicine he said would kill any roots left behind and stop any infection. In fact, since I'd just finished the penicillin, he wasn't going to prescribe me anything for infection unless I developed problems later.

He packed my tooth with gauze and covered it with wood putty, or at least that's what it tasted like, which he said was a temporary patch and I needed to come back if it fell off. He told me that my root canals were in much better shape than he'd first thought and that I could probably finish everything up with one more visit. That visit needed to be within the next few days to the next few weeks. Gotcha.

They took away the dental dam, made me rinse and spit, and told me to wait while they finished up some paper work. Between all the drugs, having the dental dam smashed up against my face, and the funny clamps holding my mouth open, my whole face felt cramped. I amused myself by watching the ceiling tiles some more while repeating "Rubber baby buggy bumpers" over and over. Which came out something like "blublur blaybly blubly blublers, blublur blaybly blubly blublers!"

When I next looked up, the dentist and two assistants were standing in the doorway looking at me funny. The dentist eventually said "He'll be all right."

One of the assistants came in to take my blood pressure while the other stood guard at the door. I signed a few more forms and then they took me back to the front office, where I forked over my share of payment and made an appointment to return three weeks hence.

On the way home, I decided that I was thirsty and we stopped for drinks. Remembering the old sit-com plots where a person who'd just had dental work tried to drink, eat, or talk and got made fun of for the rest of the episode, I didn't talk, didn't try to eat, and drank very, very carefully. I made damned sure that I was actually hitting my mouth with the bottle and actually getting the diet drink into my mouth and actually swallowing.

So it was a big surpise when, after drinking half a bottle, I noticed that my chest was getting cold.

Checking the rear-view mirror, I discovered that every third or fourth drink, after I'd thought I'd swallowed, half of it dribbled out the corner of my mouth, down into my beard, and onto my shirt. It wasn't until after it soaked into my shirt that it hit a part of me that wasn't numbed and could actually feel it.

A couple of hours after I got home, enough feeling came back that I was able to drink properly. Also, the cramp in the side of my face finally relaxed and I was able to stop smiling on that side.

I also felt the barest beginnings of pain. I took a buffered analgesic as a precaution and went about my business.

Now, everybody talks about how root canals are painful, but they actually aren't all that bad and, after all, the whole purpose of them in the first place is to stop pain. In fact, many people with roots in much worse condition than mine need absolutely no painkillers at all because the roots are already dead and aren't sending pain impulses anymore, anyway. Other people get their root canals done early enough that the roots aren't infected and inflamed and sensitive, so they don't have a lot of pain.

I was the unhappy medium.

My jaw, which had been swollen and sensitive for weeks due to ongoing tooth infections, decided to tell me exactly where each and every one of those painkiller injections had been. And those roots that had been filed out decided to tell me exactly where they had been cut off. And the muscles in the side of my face decided to tell me exactly what they thought of being cramped up like that for hours.

The pain got worse and I decided to break down and take one of my prescription pain pills.

The pain got even worse and I took another as soon as the label on the bottle said that I could.

The pain got worse still and I took another as soon as the label on the bottle said that I could.

Then, about 14 hours later, I woke up. I poked at my face and gums and tooth.

No pain.

NO PAIN!

No pain for two full days.

Then something happened.

But that's another story.

Continue on to Part 5.

Copyright 2005 by Troy H. Cheek. Reprint with prior written permission only. Comments and questions to