The Saga Continues

Well, boys and girls, I still have my tooth, such as it is. It may be hollowed out, filled with gutta percha, built up with some magic fake tooth material, and covered in a temporary crown, but it's still embedded in my upper jaw bone. So that's something.

After undoing all of the original work from a few years ago, the dentist seemed pretty confident that the root wasn't cracked anywhere, which is what would have forced a complete extraction. He said there's still a chance this one won't work, in which case he'll still have to take the tooth, but he's optimistic. Of course, he also said that the best we can hope for is that this one will only last about ten years, and then the tooth will probably have to come out anyway. Which, jeesh. I was tempted to say let's just get it over with. But upon further reflection, I'm happy to put off the additional pain, both physical and fiscal, until the semi-remote future.

But let's talk about pain for a moment anyway, shall we? So, I know people who've had root canals and claimed it wasn't so bad. I, however, distinctly remember, as I've mentioned, the feeling of my nerves being plucked like guitar strings. The dentist claimed this time around wouldn't be so bad because the tooth was already dead and all. Ha. I learned several things during my 2 hours in the dental chair on Friday.

1) Dentists lie. I already knew this, of course, but continue to be duped repeatedly because they seem so nice, I give people the benefit of the doubt, and I'm stupid like stone.
2) I metabolize novocaine (or lidocaine or xylocaine or whatever the hell local anesthetic they use) faster than the ordinary person. Basically he'd get about twenty minutes of work done before I'd jump, white-knuckled and wide-eyed, at some jolt of pain mumbling "Mpphh-hmmmm" when he'd pointlessly ask "you feel a little something there?" So he'd shoot me up again and off we'd go. At one point, he just gave up and would warn me about certain things, saying "You'll probably feel this a little, sorry about that." No wonder people would just die of dental infections before anesthetics were discovered.
3) Apparently the jaw bone is highly ennervated, which more than makes up for the lack of living nerve inside my molar.
4) One of the levels of Hell without a doubt involves laying on your head in a dental chair, blinding light in your eyes, a rubber block propping open your jaw, trying to breath through your nose but feeling some errant sinus drainage blocking that route while a stretched rubber sheet is effectively smothering your attempt to breathe through your open mouth where the saliva is accumulating anyway, being asked to open up even wider though your jaw is so fatigued you start to shake, then being told to not move a muscle while three different implements and two hands are wedged between your jaws lest the whole procedure has to start again while your swallow reflex meanwhile suddenly becomes uncontrollable and your tongue starts flailing about impertinently. Oh Sisyphus cakewalked into eternity by comparison.