dental treatments

I mentioned a bit ago that I needed to get some dental treatment.

Usually on Thursday I’d talk about my weight, but it was pretty rubbish again this week.  I lost a pound (which I didn’t understand as I ate crap but then I thought about how much work and little sleep I’d had, so maybe it makes sense) and walking was average, so instead I want to talk about my dental work.

I had the last one the other week.  Basically, I’ve had two new fillings put in - both on the bottom of my mouth, but one on each side.

The one on the left of my mouth was a big one, and it’s that one that I think was really a replacement for a filling that fell out several months back.  It was also so big that it was close to my nerve and he was a bit worried that it would end up with constant pressure on the nerve that would cause me constant pain.

It’s that sort of pain that makes me uncomfortable with the dentists.  I know people are afraid of the dentist, but my thing isn’t really fear.

Basically, my teeth are rather sensitive, so whenever he has to do drilling, I’m always worried it will hurt.  Obviously everyone is worried about that, but mine is more like I’m worried that, although numbed, he’ll suddenly breakthrough to the nerve and it’ll be agony.

It’s quite specific and does literally go back to when I was very young and the dentist did a shallow filling and didn’t numb my teeth.  Now she didn’t break through, but there was a point where suddenly it went from a vague feeling of someone doing something to a sharp pain.

And I’ve also found that, even when numbed, I can often still feel them drilling and it hurts - even when it’s had a really long time to take effect.  It’s like when I had to have my root removed - he ended up having to numb two completely different areas in my mouth because apparently I have multiple nerve connections, which is quite rare he said.

Anyway point was I was fully expecting a rather unpleasant time of it.  In particular I was worried about when the pain killers wore off.  I've often had a lot of discomfort, but this time, both were all right.  The anaesthetic wore off, but I then wasn’t wracked with pain.

Now the one on the leftisn’t100% comfortable to eat particularly tough or hard food with, but overall I’d say it was a success.  In particular, the white filling used on the right is almost totally invisible, which is always nice.

But then given how much it’s all cost me, you would hope for good results.  I’m private (they used to be NHS, but, like most dentists around here, they went private a few years back - NHS dentists are like rocking horse poo around here, and the few there are have waiting lists as long as both my arms) so it costs silly amounts of money.

To be honest, it’s the hygienist that feels like the biggest rip off.  Especially now, as she’s given e about all the advice she can to help me do my cleaning, and it’s clearly helped as she did very little when I last went (though quite how two fillings ties into that, I don’t know).