Wednesday 15 August 2012

Today's Review: Getting A Filling

I went to the dentist today for the first time in a long time. Tut tut, you may say, but there was really nothing bothering me about my teeth that I felt demanded urgent attention. There was a spot between tow of my front teeth that periodically bled while brushing, and this is what I mentioned to the dentist during my checkup. Well, it turns out my teeth were all pretty good, but that spot where the bleeding was happening had a cavity.

Well damn, that's not what you want to hear about your front teeth. But luckily enough, the dentist told me she'd put a white filling in there, and she could do it right now if I wanted. Not wanting my new dentist to think I had commitment issues, I quickly agreed. After all, there's no time like the present. So onwards we went. She asked if I'd like to have the area numbed first, informing me that it wouldn't be too uncomfortable but there would be some pain. Here's the catch-22 of dentistry. I've had fillings before, I've also had orthodontic work in the past, and the injection they give you to numb any potential pain goes right in the roof of your mouth and hurts like a bitch. So I figured I'd try it sans goofy juice, 'cause I'm a big tough man, I can take it, and also I had work straight after and I didn't want to slur my way through the shift. There'd probably be some drooling involved too. Not pretty.

So the procedure began. Some nice light cleaning of the area, I love all those suction and spray pipes that rid you of your need to swallow saliva. "This isn't too bad" I thought, foolishly. Then came the drill. There's a funny thing about being in pain when two people are staring intently into your mouth. Normally your first reaction when in pain is to shield the painful area, and also to moan or contort your face in some way. But when a dentist is directly causing pain by cutting away at one of your teeth, there's not much you can do to convey it. Well, if it was bad enough I'm sure I could have reached out to slap them or something, but it wasn't excruciating, just pretty painful.

So here I was, laying in a chair, a woman literally boring a hole in my tooth while another harvested my saliva for probably nefarious purposes, and all my body could do to respond to the situation was to widen my eyes to a look of intense discomfort and pain. Not that it helped, these are dentists, not opticians, they probably don't even know what eyes are. Soon, it was over. When the tools were out of my face I had a sneaky little tongue of the affected area, and discovered a pretty massive hole. How is this meant to help? "Oh, I see bacteria have caused a small cavity in your tooth. Let me fix it by making it bigger". But I guess them's the breaks in the dentist world.

After that it was pretty simple. Some amount of stuff got jammed into my newly acquired tooth hole, and the assistant kept pointing what appeared to be a laser gun at it until it beeped enough times. I wasn't sure of the details because I was more concerned with getting out of the room alive, but at the end of it I had no hole, and instead a build up of what seems like dried super glue at the back of my tooth, which I have been assured will fall off in due time. But all in all I must say it wasn't a very pleasant experience. If someone informs you that they decided to have a filling one day and really enjoyed it, I don't think you should believe them. They're probably wrong in the head or something.

My rating: 0/5

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