Dental Adventures - Day Five, Friday

In all fairness, the appointment with the endodontist was fairly straightforward and went pretty well.

And even the almost-screw-up turned out for the best.

Mostly.

SweetPea had been prescribed diazepam to take prior to appointments. I made sure she had one on the way over and, by the time she was seen, she was, let's say, high as a fucking kite. The thing about diazepam is that it does precisely bupkiss for a severely overactive gag reflex.

It also didn't really touch her pain level, but she cared a lot less about it. This information would come in handy later.

As the staff was going about getting her x-rays and getting her prepped for her root canal, including injecting anaesthetic, SweetPea was having a really hard time with her gag reflex. Finally, something the Endodontist said triggered a series of dot connections in my head and I dashed for the paperwork in the van.

They were trying to do the wrong tooth*.

On the plus side, the anaesthetic helped a lot on that side of her face, which was also giving her no end of grief.

The root canal itself was an interesting procedure. The Endodontist could only work for about 15 to 30 seconds at a time before SweetPea was gagging so much he had to stop. I'm sure the whole thing took entirely longer than necessary, but he was patient and had a sense of humor about it.

Having personally never required one, it was interesting to watch the entire procedure. Not that I'd want to get one after that, but it was interesting to watch how it was all done.

Once it was all done, everything went pretty well for a couple of hours. SweetPea's mouth was thoroughly numb, and she was probably as pain free as it was possible to get. And, of course, she wouldn't have cared, anyway, because the diazepam was still on board.

A few hours later, however, and it was a different story altogether.

Both the anaesthetic and the diazepam had worn off and SweetPea had not only her original pain and the pain from the root canal, but also the pain from the injection sites on the other side of her mouth. Ouch!

I gave her the Ibuprofen 800 that she was prescribed and attempted to wait it out. Finally, I gave her another dose of diazepam and she started feeling better stopped caring about the pain.

Fortunately, those were the only two doses she needed for this whole debacle.

Tomorrow we'll discuss oral surgery. Or "Please don't make me punch you because I'd really like to."

*Totally my fault, by the way. I said the wrong one when scheduling the appointment. They were trying to do the root canal on her very last molar, which was set for extraction. And, also, why she was so gaggy about it.