| Apr. 15th, 2009 @ 05:34 pm A haircut for my teeth |
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Today is my first day of my last vacation as an intern. In celebration, I went back to the dentist. I was having all this weird shooting, brief, electricity-like pain when I flossed where my new filling was. It took me five weeks to get time to make an appointment, and over the last week I had been less irritated by my teeth. I flossed it last night just to be sure it was still annoying and sure enough, it was.
My dentist called after I made the appointment seeming all caring and whatnot, but I felt also desperate not to lose my business. But maybe I am just jaded. She did say "you know it is with someone else, right?" towards the end of the conversation. Not exactly, like, confidence inspiring.
So today I went and saw her associate, who was entirely pleasant and didn't call me Dr. W_, which was nice. I think it is a little strange that other doctors do that. I am supposed to be playing the role of patient, not doctor. Give me a little paternalism, people!
He started by doing what I find myself doing - explaining what I think the problem is, prior to doing any testing. It is a good exercise I think. Apparently there can be some freakish reaction in which the "tooth colored" fillings bind very strongly with the enamel and then when it is "activated by flossing" it can cause pain. This activation intrigues me. I plan to read about this phenomenon. Of course, my fear was that the filling was disrupted in some way and my nerve was sticking out somewhere. So we did the x-ray. The filling material is squarely embedded in enamel, at least as far as a 2-D image can represent. He looked in my mouth and confirmed it is all there.
Then we moved on to the bite, which had also been less irritating over the last few days, but still warranted a look. Then he ground down the filling some, as apparently every time I closed my teeth together on that side I was slamming in to the filling. He was also kind enough to smooth the edges to make flossing easier (not that the pain will disappear...) which I also appreciate as both the areas of my mouth my dentist messed with were very tight to floss. The front still will be. So hopefully that is better. I still notice the bite some, but probably today just because it is a little different than it was.
I was in and out in half an hour with no sticking and only a little painless grinding. |
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