Tag Archives: dentist

Time for a Tooth update

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Don’t worry, I promise no pictures this time.  My gum has finally stopped being sore on it’s own and is now only sore if I poke the socket or press against the underlying jaw through the gum flesh (yes yes, so why do I keep doing it).  The gum is growing over the wound slowly, but it’s still pretty tender.  I can however, finally, eat on both sides of my mouth again, although it’s going to take some getting used to.  On the right side, the gap means I push food down below the top molar into the gap, rather than tearing it, it sort of just pushes it around.  I have to jiggle the food around a bit to get it over a tooth edge and hence truly chewed.

Since I have no one else to blame other than myself for this piece of mouth stupidity, I’m still beating myself up about it (it’s a personality flaw).  As Grete says, if I believed in God I’d make a great Catholic since I do personal guilt so well.

So it’s progress anyway, and I’m pleased it’s finally getting somewhere.  The pain under my tongue has mostly gone which I was attributing to the injections I got at the time, and for most of the time was causing more discomfort than the immediate gum pain.  So that’s good, I’m pleased.

I still need to arrange another appointment for 2 fillings and some cleaning, but I’ve been putting that off, partly due to cost and partly due to well, it being the dentist.  I’ll try and get that done soon.

The Tooth

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My jaw is pretty sore now, both the muscles from holding it open for 20 minutes and having my lower jaw stressed hard when the tooth was pulled, and also the gum/jaw area where the tooth was removed now actively hurts (pulsing pain).

So, here’s a few pictures of the tooth I had extracted.  Feel free to show these to your kids, or your nieces and nephews as a reminder of why they should,

  1. brush their teeth more than they do
  2. take the advice of their dentist when he says ‘you should consider having your wisdom teeth out’

This tooth was impacted by one of my wisdom teeth growing into it at an angle, and basically got a cavity and decayed at the point of impact, until the hole you see was caused when that part of the tooth fell away a few weeks ago.  I was lucky, it didn’t hurt.

If you’re reading this on an RSS feed reader, sorry, you’re going to see the pictures.  If you’re reading it on the site’s front page, you can click the link to see the pictures.  If you’re reading the full article already, then you can’t avoid the pictures any longer.

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tooth update

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So I had a crap night’s sleep, couldn’t get my mind off the dental work.  But I was pretty much resigned to it all when I got out of bed.  Got there a bit early, went in at 10:50 and was out by 11:30.  Three quick injections (uncomfortable, but not painful) and a few moments later I had no sensation anywhere near the three teeth.  The dentist wiggled the broken tooth and then pulled it out.  That was pretty uncomfortable but not painful.  It popped my jaw a couple of times, and gave me a bigger headache than I already had, but didn’t actually hurt.  Then he spent about 5 minutes putting two fillings in.  I have to say, it was super-quick, nothing like the 40 minute epic tooth filling I remember as a kid.

I have two more cavities in the top teeth on that side which will need work and there’s the other side lower molar being impacted by my wisdom tooth which is showing signs of doing what the one I just had removed did.

Don’t feel so angry about the process this time, I told him i was nervous and he made efforts to make me feel more comfortable.

However, there’s still nothing nice about having two people shove hands, suction and drills in your mouth.

The oddest thing was feeling someone yanking a tooth out of your head but not having any directly associated pain.

I kept the tooth, I’ll post photo’s later (I’ll make sure you have to click to see them), you can show them to your kids and remind them to brush their teeth more often.

Overall I feel pretty sorry for myself, the gum is bleeding quite a lot, Grete had to go and get more gauze even though her cold is back full force, and I’m keeping the wound under a bit of compression.  I can’t swallow easily, my face is still numb (and the numbness is moving up my face), but I guess it’s my own fault for not taking care of my teeth.

wish me luck

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dentist tomorrow, one extraction (blurgh) and 2 fillings (blurgh).  really not looking forward to it.  my teeth don’t hurt which doesn’t help, no motivation.

had domino’s pizza tonight, screw diabetes, screw losing weight.

probably won’t blog anything more today, will see how bad i feel tomorrow.

Sodding cold

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Still coughing, still getting annoyed by it.  Have another headache today from the coughing.  Feel as though the cold is coming back which would be an officially bad thing[tm].

Grete had her dentist checkup today – and has passed with flying colours.  It’s the first time she’s had a checkup in five years and she was pretty worried.  On top of being worried about visiting the dentist anyway obviously.  So she was pretty relieved to find out she doesn’t need any work.  My wallet was equally pleased she didn’t need any work.  So just the £180 for me next week, and then probably another £100 or so when I can find the time and energy to go back.

We’ve got guests this weekend so we’re tidying (extra-tidying honest) the house – which means basically Grete is tidying the house and I’m blogging about it, but it’s like a shared experience.  Friday we have Tracey and her mum who are here until Sunday.  On Saturday they’re going with Grete to a craft fair in Birmingham and meeting Grete’s mum and aunt there, who’ll be coming back on Saturday late afternoon.  Lynda’s going with them, so she’ll be here Saturday morning.

The BBC news site has a story which strikes a chord with me and my NHS experiences.  The comments are well worth reading (even though they didn’t publish mine yet). Here’s a (long) quote from the article,

Last year a friend of mine had an appointment with her doctor. Her local bus route was disrupted by road works. So, she left half an hour before she really needed to so as to make sure she got to the surgery on time.

As it turned out, there were no delays so she went to the reception desk prior to intending to sit down with a magazine to await her turn to see the doctor.

When the receptionist spoke to her, this was her loud greeting: “You’re early. You don’t expect to be seen early do you?”

In front of a waiting room full of strangers, my friend told me that she felt embarrassed and belittled.

In a health service that treats thousands of serious illnesses every day and has been a foundation stone of our society for 60 years, this was no life or death matter.

Yet, it is highly unlikely that a member of staff in a store such as John Lewis would address someone in this way. The people served there are customers. The people served by the NHS are patients.

It’s worth reading the whole thing and the comments.  I can’t say enough how I agree with the general points made, and in the comments section many people agree with me that it’s not usually the medical staff that are the issue, it’s the administrative staff in the way.

Of course, sometimes it can be the medical staff, like the GP who told me to eat less cake and stop taking sugar in my tea (neither of which I did at the time) because I was now diabetic.  You shouldn’t have to fight both your illness and the establishment to get good treatment.

I could rant for hours about the terrible treatment Grete has had over the years with her depression and associated issues in the hands of the NHS.  I think the idea of a national health service is fantastic, and I wouldn’t want it to go away, but the processes and people around it need to understand more clearly that their role is to get people help, and that those people are already vulnerable, scared and in need of assistance.

Wired

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Wow, wired.  Feeling physically very odd, like hyper-tense.  Usually I feel like this when my blood sugar is too high, but at the moment it’s 4.6 which is perfectly fine, although it got down to that 90 minutes after I ate lunch which is also odd.

Certainly don’t feel very comfortable.

Dentist was … as expected.  Lower molar (tooth #7) is too damaged and needs to come out, there are small cavities in at least 4 teeth, two on the same side as the molar.  Dentist recommends taking the tooth out and filling the two teeth on that side and then seeing how I feel.  Total price for all that and today’s consultation is £260.  Go back in two weeks for the tooth work.  Joy.

It’s never as bad as you fear it to be, total consultation was about 20 minutes, no pain, and he seemed ok.  He’s obviously professionally ‘unhappy’ at my 5 year absence but he didn’t nag me too much.  Grete managed to build the courage to arrange an examination as well.  I guess we’ll just have to suck the cost up – some things you just have to pay for.

I don’t think dental insurance would have helped, if we’d been covered for five years it would have cost around £18 a month so around £1000, as long as the total treatment for us both stays below that, we come out ahead.

Generally I’m pretty lucky with my teeth, I don’t take the best care of them and I’ve only got small cavities.  It’s the impacting wisdom teeth which are causing the most damage.

Just wish I knew why I felt so spaced out.

king of procrastination

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if i don’t go to bed

then i won’t go to sleep

and if i don’t go to sleep

i don’t have to wake up

and if i don’t have to wake up

the morning will never arrive

and if the morning never arrives

i won’t have to go to the dentists

Dentist

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So, dental appointment tomorrow (finally) to have the tooth looked at.  Here’s a rundown of how I’m feeling.

  1. I hate going to the dentist even when my teeth are fine, it’s an incredible invasion of my personal space, and dentist visits as a kid were not happy times.
  2. I hate not really knowing how much it’s all going to cost.
  3. I fear how much work will need to be done, whether they’ll need to or be able to remove a single molar or whether it’ll need all my wisdom teeth out.
  4. I fear how much extra stuff wrong they’ll find which will need more work and more money to correct.
  5. I ultimately fear being told that ‘they’ll all have to come out’.
  6. I find medical professionals and their receptionists intimidating, cold and impatient.
  7. I have an irrational fear / worry about not being able to open my mouth wide enough.

Hopefully, writing out why I’m so worried about it will help me deal with it.

I want to not go tomorrow so strongly that it gives me butterflies just thinking about the time of the appointment.  I am going to go, because I am stronger than my stupid fears, but it doesn’t make the fears any less troublesome to deal with.

Dentist

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Grete has more patience than me, and she’s arranged an appointment for me with the dentist on Friday.  So now I get to blog about how I hate dentists, and my irrational fear of not being able to open my mouth wide enough.

Hey, I said irrational.