Root Canal wasn't so bad afterall

Finally went for my root canal surgery after finding out I had to go for a root canal surgery 2 days back.



For the past 2 days, I was a nervous wreck, I spend 50% of my time searching "Root Canal", "Root Canal Pain Level", "Root Canal vs Wisdom Tooth Extraction", "Root Canal vs Braces" and really anything that's related to root canal and pain, I wanted to find a website that would pat my head and tell me everything would be alright.



And I did find a few websites that said root canal was "no longer a painful procedure  because thanks to the wonders of modern dentistry, what would have made even a grown man cry in the past is now a painless procedure", which calmed me down for a while, but after a while I decided that wasn't enough, I needed more assurance, so I googled even more and came across this particular website where people actually share their root canal experience on the website... and a lot of them weren't good...

TL:DR
Most painful thing she has ever experienced. 

and...

Root Canal went wrong.

Like a plethora of horrible testimonies of people just comparing it to being worst then childbirth or being the most painful thing they have ever experience, that they would rather rip off their teeth then to go through the procedure again.... very dramatic and scared the crap out of me.






So when it came to the day I had to go down to the dentist for the surgery, I was panicking, the bus ride was horrible because it felt as if I was riding to my death or the last bus ride I will ever take before getting traumatize by the root canal procedure forever.

The dental clinic is called Roots! and is located in the same building as where I get my braces done, so it was quite easy to navigate, and I actually got their on time... well I was one minute late but that's still pretty impressive.... I was almost on the dot.

Went into the clinic and was greeted by the dental assistant, it's amazing how all the dentist assisstant in the dental clinics I have visited in that particular building knows my name, the moment I walk in, whenever I go for my braces check-up, the moment I open the door...

"Hi Timothy, please take a seat" 

or with the root canal dental clinic assistant...

"Timothy right? Please pass me your IC and take a seat."

With great dental bills comes great customer service.



Passed the assistant my IC, filled up some forms and waited for my turn. I really wanted to get the root canal surgery over and done with, so it really didn't help that the patient before me after completing his surgery, decided to have a conversation with the dentist... he was talking really loudly and being a Caucasian, he was also really friendly, or he sounded like he was very friendly, so the whole time he was speaking to the dentist in the dental treatment room, I kept thinking that after he was done talking to the dentist, he would come out, notice me and try to start a conversation with me as well, which was a very uncomfortable thought because the last thing I want to do while nervously waiting for my turn to get my root canal surgery done was to start small talk with a complete stranger.... but luckily he didn't because I was really just over thinking things.




Got ushered into the dental treatment room a few minutes later and was greeted by the dentist, who was a very nice guy.  He started to do some small talk, tried to make me more comfortable and asked me to relax, I was at that point sitting in the dentist chair, whole body trembling because I was extremely nervous seeing the injection needles on my right, on a table with a bunch of vials which I assumed were once filled with local anesthetic medicine but have all been injected into the previous patients' mouth, and also because there was a standing air conditioner further back from the table of injection needles and empty glass vials just blowing directly on the right side of my already trembling body.




After some small talk, the dentist decided to go through with me what exactly he would be doing to me during the surgery, and after doing 2 days of intensive research, I already knew what he was going to do, but hearing him talk through the procedure calmed me down a little so I decided to just listen through the whole thing. There's something about being right there and then in the dentist chair that made me want to delay the root canal surgery for as long as I could, even for a minute, so when he actually completed his briefing with me, I got really scared because it turns out, I was actually more afraid of getting an oral injection than I was getting my tooth's nerves yanked out of it's canal.




So before the dentist walked away to keep his presentation charts, I requested for some topical anesthetic before getting the injection done, and I was going to ask him to leave the topical on for at least a minute, because I really did my research and I know you have to leave the topical on for a least a minute for it to take effect. The dentist was happy to oblige and he also knew what he was doing because he left the topical in my mouth for a good 2 minutes, didn't even have to tell him, he just walked out and told me to relax after applying the topical on my gums.





There are dentist who don't leave it on for long enough and they just inject straight away after applying it, which defeats the purpose... I have never met dentist who have done that personally, I always took it without topical anesthetic, but the last time I got an oral injection, the dentist did not do a good job and made the injection hurt like a bitch, he injected 3 times and it numbed everything in my mouth except the tooth he was working on, that whole treatment scarred me for life and that was the reason why I opted for General Anesthesia during my Wisdom Tooth surgery and the reason why I requested for a topical anesthetic first from this dentist.





The gums were properly numbed by the time the dentist came back and he proceeded to inject the local anesthetic in my mouth, I asked if it was only going to be once and he assured me that it will only require one shot, but at the same time, it will also sting despite having the topical applied.... that did not help me feel relax at all.




I found out that oral injections are a lot more easy to go through if I just put on this expression like someone was slowing shoving a huge gherkin up my butt....

Like this, but less expressive...

 .....like a perma constipated face which I believed confused the dentist for a bit because it probably looked to him like I was in a lot of pain when really that face was me anticipating pain. I didn't feel the needle entering but I could feel the liquid entering my gums and that did hurt a bit, so I flinched, the dentist apologized and injected the local anesthetic even slower than he was already doing, which I really really appreciated because the slower you inject, the less painful it actually is. Fact.




After the injection, I felt a lot more relax, the dentist once again left me alone, this time probably for a good 5 minutes to let the local anesthetic take full effect, and I just sat in the dentist chair, embracing the numbness that was slowly engulfing my entire upper right side of my mouth. When your mouth is numb, your lips feel so much bigger than they are, just makes me wonder how JayZ feels when he actually numbs his lip because he has a lot of lip space.






The dentist then came back again and by that time, the anesthetic has taken full effect and he started the root canal. I really can't remember much of what he was doing because I didn't feel any discomfort, I kept anticipating for a sudden pang when he was drilling the tooth and yanking out the nerves, but I didn't feel that, in fact, I didn't even realize he had done the cleaning up of the canal until he told me he was going to fill it up.






There was a TV that was showing what the dentist was doing to my tooth in real time, and I think he thought I was watching it, but seriously, with the chair being adjusted all the way back that I was thought I was going to slide right off, and having his hands in my mouth blocking my field of vision to the TV screen, I couldn't see anything, which was good because I really didn't want to see him drilling into my tooth.





During the procedure, I was very tempted to just doze off because there was literally no discomfort whatsoever, but as he was filling up my tooth, he was talking me through what he was doing and at that point, I was able to see what was actually happening on my tooth through the TV, I think the dentist chair go adjusted during the procedure so I could see him actually filling up the gap and flattening out the fillings to make it smooth, I never knew how meticulous it was to fill a tooth until I saw what he was doing and it was soooo boring to see him just scrapping the side of my tooth, flattening the filling, scrapping the filling again and at one point, I thought he was over scrapping and was going to just scrap all the filling he had just filled.




At that point I decided to just sit back and not bother watching the screen, just let him do what he was doing and I remember my the top of my head pressing against his stomach, like it was a pillow, I didn't even bother to shift my head, I just left it there and the dentist didn't seem to mind as well, probably gave him a steadier hold of my head as well, and before I knew it, he was done.





All the worry I had over the past 2 days were for nothing because this dentist did a fantastic job and I couldn't be more grateful. Friendly and meticulous, if only all dentist were like him, well I haven't really met any dentist who are assholes, except the one in the Army, that guy was an asshole.



Total damage was $850, which I thought was worth it for such a supposedly "worst pain I have ever experienced that's way worst than child birth" procedure being so painless. I read on forums of how people are going to cheaper dentist to get their root canals done, not really a good idea, I mean that's probably what those people on the dentist websites did, went for a cheaper alternatives and ended getting traumatize forever, happened to me, went to the school dental that was free to get all my cavities fixed, ended up getting a phobia of oral injections.






So root canals are really not painful at all if you manage to find a good dentist, espcially one that specializes in root canal surgery, in my case, even the dental clinic's name root canal related.




On the way home, while I was in the bus, I was actually seated in front of this 2 girls, who were chatting so loudly, and they had those those super educated JC kids accent, so initially I thought it would be nice to just eavesdrop, if that's even considered eavesdropping, they were talking about their schools and lecture and using really complicated English, it's like they have a thesaurus in their head and every time they are forming a sentence, their in built thesaurus will quickly find a complicated word to replace the simple words people would normally use....

For example.



Normal Person would say..

"The ulcer in my mouth is killing me"

They would say...

"This agonizing lesion in my mouth is causing so much carnage on my mental state."

  ...at first it was fun to eavesdrop, but the whole fun in eavesdropping is listening to a conversation that's meant to be private, those girls were obviously not trying to have a private conversation, so  it quickly got to the point where they just became really loud and annoying that I actually got really bothered by it, so the moment I saw a vacant seat in the front, I quickly went to occupy it.., and I'm someone who rarely switches seats in the bus, the only times i switch seats are when the air con's leaking, or the person beside me is way too fat and taking up more than 50% of my seat, if I can occupy 50%, I will still sit next to the fat person, or inconsiderate asshole who's spreading his legs wide apart so his ball can have some air to breathe.




 Anyway, I digress, when I reached home, the anesthetic actually wore off just in time and I could feel my mouth again, it was amazing how the dentist got the timing right because I got to drink my Gong Cha without having to worry that it will start leaking out from the right side of my mouth... I know that because as I was gargling my mouth during the procedure, water was leaking on the right side and I had to lean my head to the left to properly rinse my mouth.