mystereys's Journal: Ouch.

Two days ago, I started to get this constant, nagging pain in and around my top front right tooth. It wasn't that bad in the morning, then it got really bad at night (I woke up at 3 am to take an aleve--I had taken some advil earlier, but it must have worn off). So I wake up yesterday, and although I'm not in as much pain as the night before, I make a dentist appointment anways.

I get to the dentist's office, and the dentist feels around the tooth and gum, and I tell him what hurts. It's never comforting when the dentist says "that's not good." So then his assistant goes and brings this electrical device, which measures the nerve endings of the tooth. The metal tip of the device touches your tooth, then a small electrical current is slowly rampled up through the tip and you grunt to let the dentist know when you're in pain, at which point the dentist turns off the current.

He tests my ailing tooth, along with the two healthier teeth next to it. For the healthy teeth I grunted for him to turn off the device at around 15 (I forgot to ask what units the device measures in). For the problem tooth, the device just kept going all the way to the end, which was in the 60s .

My dentist sat me up and told me that instead of having a healthy tooth root, I have soupy mass of former nerves, and that I need a root canal. Furthermore, he mentioned I might want to also consider getting a crown for that tooth, to help strenthen it. I've had problems with that tooth for a long time--it almost got knocked out when I was 12, I ate too many lollipops during high school and had to get a filling in the back of the tooth, then a few months ago, that filling had to be taken out and replaced because the filling had gone bad and begun to ooze or something, and made corner of the tooth turn a grey color. Now, I have to get a root canal and possily a crown.

He sent me home with a prescription for penicillin and a couple vicodin pills (which may or may not be enough) and an appointment to go back in a few weeks for an hour and a half love session. He told me I can take up to 4 advils every 6 hours for the pain.

And just to add to my sob story, a few months back, another front tooth was chipped when I was grabbing a frying pan which fell from the cupboard and hit me. All things considered, I suppose a chipped tooth was better than a broken nose.

I hate having to see the dentist.