Dental Aftermath

Yesterday was dominated by dental effects. I'm very slow to respond to any kind of anesthesia, so after the dentist injected me and came back in what he considered the right amount of time, I still had virtually complete feeling where I was supposed to be numb. So, he gave me some more, after which things moved quickly.

He had a nifty camera on a stick that takes a picture of the tooth. He projected it onto the tv in the room and showed me that the tooth was cracked in all 4 directions and said I was lucky it hadn't fallen apart already. (Didn't I predict that!). So, it was time to grind. And grind. No pain from that, but it was the way way back tooth and keeping my mouth open wide enough for him to work was painful enough. And, although hubby will never accept it, they told me I had a small mouth!

The sound is irritating, the drill bit that makes your head vibrate isn't much fun, and I really, really don't like the smell of burning tooth.

The flip side to being slow on the uptake for anesthesia is that it takes forever to work its way out of my system. I got the first shot at about 10:15 AM. I couldn't feel much of anything until nearly 5:00 PM. And even when feeling came back, my jaw was too sore to open wide enough for a normal size bite of food. (Which, considering the anniversary dinner with the extra chocolate souffle, might not have been such a bad thing.)

When he finished, the dentist said I'd done a 'good job.' I told him I was more concerned that he had done a good job.

But it's done, and all I have to do is baby it for 2 weeks until the permanent crown is in.