Root Canal - I Don't Need No Stinkin' Root Canal

Yesterday was my root canal date. Five minutes after I started driving to my appointment the tooth started throbbing. There was some instant motivation to get it fixed!

I arrived at the dentist, checked in and filled out the requisite reams of paperwork.

There was a soothing fountain and mellow music. My tooth stopped hurting quite as much.

They took me back to the chair. The dentist asked if the tooth hurt. I told him yes because I had forgotten my Motrin. The assistant brought me six-hundred milligrams worth.

The dentist reclined me. My sore shoulder started hurting. A five-year old sneaking in your bed every night tends to cause all sorts of back pain. It must be that small patch of bed I get relegated to while he sprawls.

The dentist checked the tooth for pain by tapping it. We verified that it did indeed hurt. He asked if I ever tapped it myself. I resisted the urge to ask why the hell I would want to do that and instead nicely replied that I tried to avoid the tooth.

He put the mask on my face and told me to breathe through my nose. The assistant put headphones on my ears, turned on the television above me and gave me the clicker.

I tried to breathe through my nose but it was really hard. The majority of my childhood was spent catching every available cold/flu germ and I am a mouth breather. But I tried. It was just oxygen at first. Then he added the gas.

Holy guacamole! It smelled horrid. I felt like I was drowning and I couldn't get a breath of fresh air. I was instantly dizzy. Instead of the calm I had hoped for I had the feeling one gets on their twenty-first birthday just before they pass out on the bathroom floor.

I said, "I can't do this!"

They let me up. The dentist asked me what it was about the process I didn't like.

"Is it just the numbing?", he asked.

"No," I blurted loudly. "It's the numbing and the sound of the drill and having my mouth open..."

He was looking a little irked so I tried to ease back on the hysteria a bit.

He said he had another patient to attend to. Could I wait and we would figure out what to do.

So I sat and waited. He came back and he wrote me prescriptions. I take one pill before bed, one pill an hour before the appointment and two pills once I get there. He said I probably won't remember a thing.

But what if my panic overrides the pills? I am so damn petrified that I won't be completely numb and I'll feel that drill. What if the pills don't work? What then?

In the meantime, I've told my husband that if we dressed up for Halloween, I know the perfect his and her costumes.

TA DA!













Minus the stethescope of course