Smoke, Fire, Blood, Guts, and Debris

I had my root canal today. I didn't really know what to expect. JD told me I would be in so much pain, I would be in bed for 2 days. I imagined the worst: blood, guts, and torture devices being crammed in my mouth for 2 hours. I was scared. And because I was scared, I saved the google searches until after the procedure because I didn't need to know the truth.

I arrived at the dentist first thing this morning. I was nervous, but trying not to think about what was to come. The dentist prepped me for the root canal by giving me the novocaine shot, then left me alone for several minutes with nothing but my fears and the instrument table. It was not a good moment. I got myself pretty worked up for what was to come. He returned and as he was reclining my chair he said, "let the smoke, fire, blood, guts, and debris begin!" Then he chuckled as he drilled a hole into my tooth and extracted the nerve. Ummmmmm.........what?!

The rest was a blur of, well, smoke, fire, blood, guts, and debris. There was the drilling, then quite a bit of extracting (it felt like he was flossing my tooth from the inside out, eek!), some cleaning, packing of my tooth with rubber, then he lit a match and stuck a flame in my mouth. Hand on a Bible. Something about trimming the paper cone thing precisely level with my tooth. I don't know, but it was weird. I kept my eyes closed after that.

The whole thing was somewhat painless. I felt the shot, a lot of tugging and pulling of tooth guts, and pounding some rubber filling into my root. At one point, I caught myself moaning and breathing like I was giving birth. It was a very weird sensation having my tooth emptied of its contents. Which by the way, was completely evaporated. My tooth was deader than a doornail. 

After the procedure was finished, I had the dentist recap everything he did. I like knowing the hows and whys to medical stuff after the fact. Never before. It was pretty interesting and I think he liked that I was so into dentistry. He told me to expect some pain, but so far, I have had none. My jaw and mouth regained feeling a few hours after I got home, but I haven't had any pain yet. I'm hoping and praying that I can still say the same tomorrow.

I still have to get prepped and fitted with a crown in the coming weeks, but hopefully the worst is behind me. Even though it wasn't as terrible as JD predicted, I really don't want to have another root canal for the rest of my life. One flaming match in my mouth is enough to last a lifetime.