tooth trouble

I finally decided to have my tooth pulled. In a fit of agony. On a Saturday. I called and begged my dentist to come in and just rip it out of my mouth. He made a few calls, found one of his assistants willing to come in and I raced to his office, ready to be done with the pain once and for all. Yeah, that always works out, right?

By the time I got there, they had examined my x-rays and decided that the tooth did not in fact have a question mark shape. It has a CORKSCREW shape. *facepalm* He told me he could pull it but didn't have the capabilities to put me under in the likely chance the root broke off. He gave me stronger pain pills, stronger antibiotics and a referral to a specialist in Utah.

Fast forward to Monday morning when I am once again holding the phone trying to talk around the pain shooting through y face. The specialist would not be in the office until Thursday. Dammit.

I call my dentist back and get another referral to a dentist in Idaho. I made arrangements for someone to pick my kids up from school, shoved my husband out the door and off to Idaho we went. Once there, I had more x-rays and more humming and hawing about what do do with the devil tooth. Then things got bad. That guy was ROUGH! He jammed the needle to the bone to numb my mouth, left the room for 15 minutes and then came back to get to work. He put a block in my mouth to keep me from biting him. Good thing too, I would have taken off his fingers. He grabbed that tooth and yanked hard to the right. The tooth snapped off at the gum line. Dammit.

The rest was a painful blur where the only thing I remember is being picked up off the chair by the roots of my teeth. When all of the pieces had been wrested from my jaw, I found out that he had cut into my jawbone and removed some of it in order to reach the roots. I walked out with 12 stitches and a bone graft.

The next day, my face blew up like a balloon. My cheek was red and shiny and there was a bone deep searing ache in my upper jaw. I had to eat in order to take my painpills and antibiotics, but it wasn't easy. I basically lived on sips of broth and pain killers for three days. Once I was able to come out of the fog the Percoset left me in, I slowly started to eat more and more around a little bit. People made jokes about my swollen face (guess you should have done the dishes the first time he asked you!) and I tried to smile and nod.

Today I have one stitch left and it doesn't bother me like the others did so I don't care if it sticks around for a while. The swelling is gone, but it still hurts to smile or laugh. My smile is also very lopsided and tight.

Who needs teeth anyway?

*disclaimer* A friend copied the pic from another blog, I don't know which one, but it's not mine.