root canal Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

On Wednesday, August 16, I had a scheduled appointment with my dentist first thing in the morning to fix a chipped tooth. But a couple nights earlier, I started to experience severe pain elsewhere, in tooth 19, for those of you keeping score.

So my dentist called an audible and had X-rays done. He saw nothing. I mean, he saw the tooth, but he couldn’t see anything wrong. So his office set me up to see an endodontist at 2:40 p.m. to fix it, find more info here.

At 12:20 p.m., I got a call from the orthodontist’s office office asking if I could come in earlier, say 1:10. And I could have caught a 12:25 bus and gotten there. But I said “no” because I wanted to finish the reference question I started, and instead kept the original appointment.

Unfortunately, they were running late. While there was time to take the pictures of my tooth, with much more detail – think an MRI, though that’s technically incorrect – there wasn’t time to do the necessary root canal. And the next opening wasn’t until August 31.

So I was pretty uncomfortable, living on antibiotics and extra-strength pain relievers, which provided only a modicum of actual relief. I muddled through work and a five-day vacation in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts.

What I discovered is that some food was OK – the obvious soft foods such as apple sauce and eggs. Cheese and sliced tomatoes were OK, if I ate them on the other side of my mouth. But some foods, such as broccoli and lettuce and raisin bran had the annoying habit of drifting to the wrong side of the mouth. MISERY!

Finally, the day of the procedure came. It’s not nearly as painful as it apparently was a generation ago. And while I was tired afterwards, and the mouth was sore from the manipulation, pain from the infection went away almost instantly. I still need to go back to my primary dentist to get the tooth capped. Visit this site https://dugasdental.com/ if you have dental problems.

I’ll admit I now regret my customer service orientation at work that, as it turned out, cost me two weeks of unnecessary pain.

For about four days, it started hurting when I would eat while using tooth 19. So this past Wednesday morning, I finally called my dentist’s office. Amazingly, I got an appointment that day at 2 p.m. (if not that day, then it would not have until tomorrow). From my symptoms, he believes I need a root canal. The tooth had been capped many years ago, not by him, and it’s a good chance that it has an infection, though nothing ominous is on the X-ray.

He referred me to an endodontist who has done work on his teeth, who can take me in a week. The bad news is that the specialist doesn’t take my insurance, which means that I’ll have an outlay of $1000 to $1500. The semi-good news is that my insurance company will reimburse me about 50% after the fact.

As I am making my appointment, my wife and daughter arrive for their scheduled cleanings. After I hang up, the reception asks, “What was that?” I have no idea what she was talking about, though the lights did flicker momentarily.

I get on my bicycle and was about to depart. But as I’m departing the building, I see a bunch of folks standing around looking northward up the street. It turns out they were looking at a hole from where a manhole cover had flown up in the air. It looked like this:

There were multiple police and fire vehicles on the scene, plus a truck from the National Grid utility.

I go back into my dentist’s office, and I apprise them of these facts. I didn’t know at the time that there were in fact multiple explosions from an underground fire. Soon, some parking attendant advised the dentist’s office to clear; it was all hands on deck to respond to this event, which had happened before.

Anyway, don’t know how energetic I will be to reply to comments after my procedure this coming Wednesday. Eventually, I will respond to your comments, and go visit your sites as well, if I’ve done so in the past.

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