Tuesday, October 4, 2005

Nerve-wrecking Dentist

Oh my good golly! I swear I'll be religious abt brushing, and visit the dentist regularly, and taste of minty Darlie all the time. If you read my last instalment, I had to go fix this crown over a molar. But alas there was this nerve infection and it became a root canal treatment instead. To the lucky all of you who don't know what that is, it's basically a process to remove the dying or infected nerves in the tooth, before crowning it. It was an interesting idea of a nerveless tooth. Oh blammy.

The anesthetic jabs around the tooth didn't work, and between holding my breath and trying not to die from asphyxia, and trying to catch THE expert's cheem lingo abt acidic pH from infection inside the tooth is much lower... jazz like that I cldn't hear above all the gassy sounds... ok well, then THE expert took a look, and decided to give 6 jabs in total (!!), 2 of which went directly INTO the nerve zone. It brought new appreciation for the phrase "to hit a raw nerve". Thereafter there were lots of scrapping sounds apparently from fine needles clearing out the nerves.

Ok, the visit was absolutely educational, cos all along I thought nerves were this lines that ran beneath the tooth. So I had this visual image of drilling through the tooth and snipping the nerve. But haha, then I was told nerves were actually in the middle of a tooth. Amidst the equipment sounds, THE expert said something about "rocks stones" in the nerve, which I later found out were calcium deposits as part of some bodily self-defense mechanism. And oh, bet you didn't know that nerve can have pus? It was absolutely bordering on gross yuckiness.

THE expert announced those discoveries with some tinge of pride and amusement like a school boy in a lab, while the patient was just dying in the chair. Yucks! Right, I shan't gross people out further. Back to days of mush and porridge diet. I'm now the #1 loyal fan of 3-in-1 cereals and instant mashed potatoes. Sigh....