And now, some more dental angst

Tooth #3 is gone. It did not go gently. Or silently. In point of fact, it had grafted itself to the bone of my jaw and flat-out refused to be pulled out.

This just in: The only thing worse than the sound of a dental drill working on your teeth is the sound of a dental drill working on your teeth for an hour and a half STRAIGHT.

I may never recover from the trauma. Especially since they then looked me dead in the eye, cool as cucumbers, merciless @*^&@er that they are, and said, “OK, and for the next week you will need to limit your tobacco (ok, no problem) and alcohol (WHAT?!?!?!?!?!)…”

Are they crazy? ARE THEY CRAZY?!

And right on the heels of that proclamation, the nice lady added, “…and whatever you use for a headache should be just fine for any residual pain…”

Oh no. No. No, it isn’t. And yes, I made them write me a prescription for something a little bit stronger than Excedrin, thank-you-very-much. Because instantly, I had in my head a horrific vision of myself at 2:00 tomorrow morning, writhing and kicking and crying in my bed (people, I am not strong when it comes to dental pain) (or, well, any pain at all – my own, or anybody else’s. I cry when my children get vaccinations, this is how anti-pain I am) and wishing to GOD that I had demanded Vicodin rather than thrusting out my chest in my best “manly-girl” imitation and saying, “Yes, I’m sure you’re right, Excedrin will be fine…”

The full extent of Tooth #3’s debauchery was revealed today.

We knew there had been an abscess. And that it had been cooking away in there for quite a little while now. Today, we discovered that the abscess had made a fair amount of my bone “spongy”. This is a word which means, “must be drilled out of your mouth”.

In my humble opinion, the words “drilled out” and “bone” just don’t go together.

So a fair amount of bone was removed in order to remove the nasty bits. And then it was discovered that the abscess has managed to get into my sinus cavity. And friends, I really should have been wearing my iPod with the volume cranked up to about 11, because listening to the conversation between the dentist and his assistant was gross. “Hmm, don’t suction that, let it pool up a little bit…yes, that’s definitely fresh drainage…OK, I think we’ve got the worst of it…”

Ew.

Ew, ew, EW!

OK, you know what? I need both of you to stop talking. Use sign language or something. I don’t want to know what-all Tooth #3 has been up to all this time.

Seriously.

I don’t want to know.

It took just under two hours, but finally the bone graft material was packed in, a membrane placed over the whole mess, stitches in place, and I was back upright and among the living. We had hoped to do the implant today as well, but alas – too much bone had to be messed with (and I’d been in the chair long enough, thank you all the same), so we now have to wait for the bone graft to set and heal and so forth. I’ll be waiting four to six months before going back in to get a screw torqued into my jaw.

I have already begun amusing myself with the thought of being able to respond to the question, “What’s the matter with you, do you have a screw loose or something?” by reaching into my mouth and tugging on my implant. “Nope, the screw is good and tight!”

BWA HAHAHAHAHAHA.

Ahem. Yes. I am very easily amused. And also possibly I am still only twelve years old inside. BUT MY KIDS THINK I’M COOL!