Well, I’m not dead. But, it was basically hell. Instead of 1 hour, it took a full 2 hours. The doctor said it was exceptionally tough since the roots of my teeth are long and curved. Before we started the assistant explained many parts of the procedure, and told me about what was going to happen so I could be ready for it. What she didn’t prepare me for was the smell. In the early parts of the procedure I was lying there still trying to adjust to breathing with the dental dam in. (A dental dam is a rubber cover that totally isolates the tooth in question from the rest of your mouth. It also prevents breathing through your mouth, and if the doctor moves wrong temporarily covers your nose as well.) The endodontist was drilling the filling and top part of my tooth out to begin the actual root canal procedure, when I began to notice a bad smell. When you have no choice but to breath through your nose you can’t really escape from a bad smell. It didn’t take long for me to realize that the smell was being generated from the friction and heat of the drill on my tooth. All I could do was lie there. Feeling the vibration of the drill, hearing the sound of it inside my head, and then smelling the awful buring smell was almost more than I could handle. I think my mind sort of wandered off because I got though it somehow. Thankfully when we finished the doctor was happy with the outcome. For now I’m going to go home and hope that I don’t actually need to take the insane amount of pain medication I was prescribed.

Tags: meds, pain, rant, root canal