Have just
returned from a marathon dental appointment, which I made yesterday after my
one remaining fully functional chewing lower back molar broke off in my mouth
while eating a lovely soft juicy piece of pear. And not just a bit of tooth, but the
entire thing. I hadn’t even bitten into the pear, I’d cut it up into nice bite
size pieces so I could nibble away while clacking away on the computer at work.
The tooth’s days
were obviously numbered to have succumbed during such a harmless eating event,
and I knew the resulting treatment wasn’t going to be pleasant. I doubted the
tooth would be able to be saved, but to extract a tooth that has broken off at
the gum line with nothing to grab on to to pull it out, this is one trip to the
dentist I wasn’t looking forward to.
Add to this I was
led away from the waiting room like a lamb to the slaughter by a final year student, albeit with supervisors hovering in
the room watching over several students go through their paces with us willing
victims who had signed away our lives and our consent to not being treated by experts. I didn’t
want to discourage him by saying I wasn’t going to let him anywhere near what I
thought might be beyond his expertise, so it was encouraging to hear he had
already managed a difficult extraction this morning.
Consulting with
his supervisor the verdict I was expecting was confirmed. It had to come out.
And how were they going to do that I asked. Shouldn’t be a problem they said,
all they had to do was cut the tooth in half and take each half out separately,
taking care not to break it into pieces in the process seeing as root canal
treatment had been done years ago making it more brittle and sometimes more
difficult to remove. Yeah…simple…no worries.
And so the fun
began. Drill drill, grind grind, I had this picture in my head of those guys
who cut nice straight lines on paths with those noisy concrete cutting
machines. Deeper and deeper he went, and after much pushing and pulling and
deciding he still hadn’t actually cut the thing in half, back we went to the
cutting drill. While I’m practicing my relaxation techniques and coping quite
ok, the pushing and pulling and jiggling was attempted again, but was this
tooth gonna move? Definitely not.
Supervising
dentist brought in to consult, nice guy, lovely Irish accent, happy for him to
have a go while student watches the maestro at work. Admittedly it wasn’t
completely straightforward for him either, though he did get the first half out
after putting enough pressure on my lower jaw to almost break my neck if he
hadn’t been holding everything together in his capable hands. What a wonderful thing mentoring is.
So here we were,
one half out, one to go. Should be simple right? Wrong. Head honcho gets to
work again, push and pull and drill, take a breather, push and pull and manoeuvre
it around, open my mouth up so wide I think I’m going to turn my head inside
out with all these fingers and pliers and wrenches and suckers in there, more
pushing and pulling and finally, finally out it comes. One hour later and one gaping
hole remaining for the student to stitch up, and the marathon was over.
Well, almost. One
interesting side effect, and its something that’s happened on two previous
occasions when having teeth extracted, was that I couldn’t close my left eye.
Student tells another supervisor who mentions something about an aberrant
nerve. What a nerve! At least he didn’t say it was abhorrent. Anyway,
after closing my eye manually every couple of minutes, and trying not to wink
at the checkout lady in the supermarket on my way home, it finally came good as
the numbness wore off, and I can now talk without drooling.
And to top it all
off, I just answered the phone and who should it be but the dental student,
checking in with a courtesy call to make sure I’d got home ok and that my eye
was working again. Now that’s service, first time I’ve ever had a follow up
call from a dentist. He graduates in a few months, almost makes me want to go
along to cheer him on.
Mushy food tonight, what fun.
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