The Return of Crentist

I had to go back home this week in order to make another trip to the dentist to get my permanent crown put in as well as have a filling done. I've been waiting to tell the story of how it went because I think that it really needs to be told with the help of CAPS LOCK. I had to show up to the dentist at 10am in order to get the crown and stuff done and then get my retainer reshaped afterward. As I was sitting in the lobby I was thinking of how bad the procedure could be and didn't really expect it to be much worse than when I got the temporary crown put on. But soon I had found that I was sorely mistaken and underestimated the sheer horror of what I was getting myself into.

The dentist first came in to give me a couple of shots on the right side of my mouth since that was the side which was getting the filling. My crown, however, was being put in on the left side of my mouth and that side was not being numbed. So now that the right side of my mouth was starting to become numb another dentist(or possibly hygienist, i dont know the difference) came in to pull off the temporary crown that was in. OH MY FREAKING GOD(almost my exact reaction when they began pulling off my crown). The dentist that had put on my temporary crown put it on with a super strong cement so that it wouldn't slide off easy, well that just made it harder to get off. So the dentist was now using some tool she referred to as the tapper to tap the crown off, and oh how that hurt like nothing else. She finally got the temporary crown off but that was definitely not the end of the pain.

Why the fuck did that hurt so much?

With the temporary crown off I could feel everything on the tooth that was being fixed. The dentist started scraping off at the left over cement on my tooth and I could feel it all the way to the root, causing me to flinch at minor hits to my open tooth. Even when the dentist used the suction around my tooth it hurt, and the same thing happened when she used water over there. Everything that she did caused some sort of pain in the tooth and all I was hoping for was an end. After a while the dentist finally shaved down the permanent crown enough so that it would fit snug and be in line with the other side of my mouth. Putting the permanent crown on caused an initial surge of pain in my tooth since it was kind of cold, but it adjusted to feel fine.

I thought that the crown being put on was going to be the worst part of my experience that day at the dentist because of how sensitive the uncovered tooth was but putting in the filling was bad as well. I had already had a couple of shots put into the right side of my mouth to numb it up but by the time that they actually started working on the filling it had been an hour and the numbness had started to wear off. So the dentist gave me a couple more shots in that side and started to clean away at the tooth(MY TOOTH WAS NOT FULLY NUMB). I started to cringe as she scraped away at the cavity because I could feel it, even with the shots that she had put in. She ended up putting a couple more shots into my mouth in order to make sure that the roots were numb. I still felt her scraping at the tooth somewhat after that last set of shots but I was willing to suffer through it(since I was told it wasn't a deep cavity) and I really wanted to get out of the dentist's(I was already there for 1.5 hours.

Getting my bottom retainer reshaped was the easiest part of the whole day. All they had to do was make a new mold and then I was able to leave and come back later to pick it up. After my whole ordeal at the dentist it made me wish that that tooth in which the crown was being put on was just removed because of how bad the pain was. Essentially though I never have to deal with it again because it's hidden away. The one thing that this did make me realize is that I never want to have a crown put on ever again. The exposure of the tooth's roots is some of the worst pain I have ever felt, and I've broken an arm. I can only think that the dentists who actually get to perform such a painful procedure are doing it to help the patients and not really to get a kick out of it. I'm sure they've all had their own horrible experiences at the dentist that they want to prevent other people from experiencing.