Friday, September 18, 2009

Crown, root canal or just pull it!!

Have I mentioned before that I'm not fond of doctors?? Well I'm not, unfortunately it's a necessary place to visit.

I had healthy teeth growing up. Never had a cavity till I was 18 yrs old. We went every 6 months, my dad was very consistent with our dental care. I remember going to the dentist, and this was before they had those nice suction things and wore masks (bad memories). We had a little sink beside the dental chair to rinse and spit in. The dentist ran the place with his son, they were both good, but the dad, well he had BAD breath. They didn't wear masks and he always made me gag from the smell. UGH.. I was to embarrassed to tell him, "your breath stinks, that's why I gag" he was obviously a little annoyed at my constant gagging. So we don't go to him anymore. I do love our dentist now, he's great with the kids and hubby has been going to him since he was a kid. Very family friendly. Still not fond of going and having my teeth pulled apart tho..

So we have insurance at the moment and went in for a cleaning, this was Davids first cleaning. He did GREAT!! He was in Amber's room and watched her get done. Her nurse was very patient and let him smell and feel the tools and such. So he climbed up in his chair when it was his turn. He already knew what tooth paste he wanted, which sunglasses and which tooth brush. He was VERY specific lol. I was in the next room and could hear it all. I heard him tell his nurse several times, "the other lady had...." so they were very comforting and he did fine even with no one in there. Mark and Amber's teeth look great. David has a little cavity in a molar.

So on to me, well back around the first of the year (while we had no insurance) I broke my molar in the top right. It was sharp and annoying to chew on but didn't hurt and I wasn't going to rack up a bill for it. I did go in sometime in Mar to have my front tooth fixed. I had a cavity and it was getting to the point it was showing black on the front. So we decided we could handle $80 to fix it. They also checked out my molar, sanded the sharp point off and said GET IT FIXED ASAP!! Well ASAP was Wed.. We found we had insurance and it ends the end of the month. Oh the joys of Union's... So i got on their on call list, if someone called in. Tuesday I got a cleaning with the rest of the family (after 2 yrs EEK) and they called me on the way home and said I could come in at 3 on Wed to hopefully get a crown. They did an X-ray and it showed the decay stopping close to the root, so maybe we could crown it, maybe we would have to do a root canal. Let's try and hope for a Crown..

They decay was to far down, a crown would fix it for now, but not last long, and root canal was the best option OR just pull it.. Oh a tough decision.. i was already numb so get it done now, or come back and do a root canal later. ugh...

Well we decided lets just pull it.. My appt was at 3pm, I got out of there at 8pm, YES 5 hours later. Ends up I have really hard teeth and it was infected, poked thru into my sinus AND I inherited my grandfathers hooked roots. YIPPEE but it's all over and I don't have to go back. My mouth is really small so that didn't leave much room either.. My tooth came out in about 20 pieces, they had to drill it apart. Pulling only helped a little, the nerves kept coming un-numb (mostly likely leaked into my sinus) and it was so close to my jaw it could only move in 2 directions with out hurting...

So I'm on an antibiotic for the infection and Ibuprofen, being here with 4 kids all day, there's not much else I can take. It seems to be working, 400mg every 4 hrs. I feel much better than I expected to. So that was Wed, this is Friday only a few more days and I should be good and new right???? and maybe I won't get as many sinus infections too..

So that was my week, how was yours?? LOL

2 comments:

Edi said...

Well I can understand your decision about having the tooth crowned, root canal or pulled. I had a problem back in Feb. Had a root canal by my general dentist. Never healed up properly and so yesterday I had it redone by an endodontist...if this doesn't work it will be pulled. But I wondered should I even try to have it redone b/c if it doesn't work it will need to be pulled anyway...sigh

Jen said...

I say just pull it lol. We took into account the history of root canals in our family, and the fact that my mouth is really small, even the cleaning is hard to do. So since i wasn't able to keep the them super clean way back there, it would likely decay again and end up pulling it anyhow. Yea i decided i didn't want to go thru all of this again. lol. I'll take care of the teeth I have left as best i can and hope we don't have to pull any others. The one they pulled was my first cavity ever. Never had trouble with it till now..