The pain first started during my company trip to Malaysia, the trip itself was fine, there was a lot of waiting involved, like a fucking lot of waiting involved, but the overall experience was good, except for the part where I was unable to sleep properly because my toothache kept waking me up in the middle of the night.
It is one of those "sour" pain that only triggers when I am lying down, which is the default position everyone has to get into before they sleep, and for the first few minutes, it's fine, but then the pain slowly creeps up and covers the entire portion of the left side of my face below the cheek while I am asleep, which of course then wakes me up and I would just lie there, concentrating on the pain and attempt to will it to go away, but the pulsating sensation doesn't stop and it gets progressively worst until I get up.
Honestly had no clue what happened, but I did manage to fall asleep the first night, forgot about it and when I got home after the trip was over, since it is only a 2 day 1 night trip, I had completely forgotten about it and went to sleep, only to be given a painful reminder minutes later that the pain is still there and it is not going away on it's own, and somehow wearing my retainer seems to make it worst, so I got up at 4.00 am to brush my teeth with a pain relief toothpaste, which didn't really work, took out my retainers and went to sleep again, adjusting my head to make the pain more bearable.
It is a real bitch, so I had no choice but to set an appointment with a dentist today to see what the fuck is going on. The last time I brought this up to my braces dentist, which was about a few months ago, there was just a bit of sensitivity issue and he said it was nothing to be to concerned about and his reason was that my filling was simply getting a little loose that's why the sensitivity is happening.
At that time, I took his word for it and just left it alone, it was still bearable then and was only uncomfortable when I chewed on that side of the mouth, but after using a sensitivity toothpaste, it got better and I ignored it, I should have known better though and he really should have just told me to get that filling replaced if it was getting loose, but he didn't, which makes me wonder if his intention is for the problem to get worst, so I will go back to him months later in pain and require a more expensive procedure to fix.
Anyways, I decided to set the appointment for 6.30pm today with a different dentist, a more affordable one because my braces dentist charges a premium for his services and I will admit, I was a little skeptical about how the consultation would go. I am a little bitch when it comes to receiving orthodontic treatment, so to have a completely brand new dentist scour my teeth for black gold is unnerving.
At around 6.00 pm, I decided to leave the office, the clinic is probably a 10 minute bus ride away, but due to peak hour traffic and a confusing shopping mall layout, I ended up only reaching the dental clinic at 6.40 pm and waited all the way till 7.00pm for my consultation to begin.
The dentist looks to be relatively young, might be younger than me from the top half of his face because is was wearing a mouth mask the entire time and he was quite gentle with the whole thing, I had an X-Ray scan and the dentist came to the conclusion that I had a massive decay on my molar, and as he was enlightening me on that, I can't help but silently curse my braces dentist for telling me it was "nothing to be concerned about" 6 months ago. The decay was so big this dentist actually told me I might require a root canal if it has affected the nerve, which was extremely worrying for me because I ain't made of money anymore.
This could have all been avoided if my braces dentist had just redone my loose fillings 6 months ago.
After a few taping and putting cold cotton pieces around the affected teeth to see where the decay was, we finally got down to business and that included 2 oral injections to numb my mouth. As I have said before, I am a little fucking bitch when it comes to dental treatment, and oral injections is probably at the top of the list of things I fear during a dental visit, I had a very horrible experience back in Secondary School when the free dental service came by and the dentist kept injecting my mouth in a futile attempt to numb the many teeth he was filling, but to no avail, the damn injections only managed to numb my lips because I could feel every drilling and every digging he had to do to my mouth for the 2 hours I was stuck in that chair, it was a fucking nightmare, and every time that Secondary School dentist saw me flinch, he would take the needle and just start injecting more like it's water and it would fucking hurt every time.
So after hearing I would be needing an injection, I pretty much begged the dentist to apply some numbing cream first before he did the injection, and he did, but unlike my root canal dentist who left the cream on for a good 5 minutes to really numb the area, this dentist left it for maybe 10 seconds before he started the injection, which worried me immensely, so I just went...
"So fast?"
... and upon realizing the huge pussy I was becoming, he quickly assured me that he would go very very slowly because that is how one achieves a painless injection, and he took his time to insert the needle. I was anticipating that prick that normally happens when I get these injections, but there wasn't anyway, it was just this dull pain that slowly drags on for 10 seconds and he was done, with the first one, and when he started the second one, which was to be injected at the roof of my mouth, he did warn me that it was going to be a little more painful, so I became even more worried, and it did hurt a little bit more, but once again, it was a bearable dull pain and I think I accidentally drank a bit of the anesthetic when he pulled the syringe out from my mouth and some of it dripped in because now, the numbness is all the way to the back of my throat and it feels like I have a sore throat because I can't really swallow properly.
The rest of the procedure after the injection was pretty painless, every time the dentist asked me that I might feel a slight discomfort and there was nothing, I just felt happy and after about 20 minutes of drilling and filling, the repair was done. Unfortunately due to time constraint, because there was another patient outside who had been waiting for an hour, the dentist couldn't do all the decay and requested that I return in a month's time to get those fixed and I agreed immediately.
I was anticipating the bill to be quite high, maybe $200 to $300, but then I remembered the X-Rays I had to take and those aren't cheap, plus there was polishing and the decay repair work that was a bit on the more complex side, there was no way my wallet would be let off that easily.
When the receptionist called me up, she broke down everything for me using a calculator and there were multiple $80 and $70 keyed into the calculation, which brought the total figure to $400. I could have gotten a mid-range phone with that money, but when I think about the figure, it really isn't as high as it could have been had I gone back to my braces dentist, who would have charged me at least $600 for the same stuff, if not more.
Now that the numbing is over, I do actually have a sore on the roof of my mouth from where the dentist injected the anesthetic,
No comments:
Post a Comment