Give me Novocaine

May 16, 2011

I hadn’t gone to the dentist in 3 years. Shameful, I know! But in my defense, I take really good care of my teeth and haven’t had any problems. Until last month when one of my molars started sending little electric shocks to my brain every time I took a sip of cold water. I was almost sure I had a cavity. To make a rather long story short, I made an appointment to a dentist right across the street from my apartment, went in, sat in the chair, got an X ray, got the nasty cavity confirmed and was assured that a filling would fix it. My very first one. Yay?! No, not really. The doctor actually assured me “You’ll be under anesthesia, of course!”

After the mild anesthetic, he gave me a first dose of Novocaine, and then said “for the lower jaw I sometimes give two doses, depending on your tolerance”. I waited a bit after the first dose, and it was obvious I needed a second one. Then we waited some more. Around 5 minutes passed and I could still feel my lower lip which was supposed to be really numb. We waited a bit more and what do you know, the funniest thing was happening in my mouth – bear in mind, this was my first semi-serious dental intervention ever. That tingling/icy feeling was so funny I couldn’t stop touching my lip and giggling. Right there on the chair. Could I get a Margarita, please? The Novocaine solo party didn’t last long because the doctor told me I’m probably good and brought forth, you know, one of the most dreaded things on the planet (up there in top 10 with being abducted by aliens, cannibals or the mafia, plane crashes and watching a Miley Cyrus video), the drilling instrument. Bzzzzzzzz. Wait, it gets better.

As soon as it touched my tooth it was as if the SS Police barged in on my party and were very displeased with the theme and decorations. For a split second I felt all the “z” in bzzzzzzzzz… and before I could gesture anything I thought my brains were being mushed into a strawberry-colored smoothie. And that’s how I got my third dose of Novocaine. Which luckily did its job.

Fast forward twenty minutes and everything was over. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d imagined from the nightmarish dentist stories people tell. I paid my bill and left. Two minutes later, I was at home, checking out the filling in the bathroom mirror, when I realized I had drooled all over my shirt. Very classy. The drug effect was still going strong and the left side of my mouth was really asleep. I kept probing and twisting my tongue to see what I could feel. And it was all so much fun! Seriously, guys, this almost made up for all the unpleasantness. Now fast forward again and five hours later… hey, what is this not nice sensation in my mouth? It hurts. IT HURTS! Make it stop!

Turns out, I took a huge bite of my tongue and I could only eat puree the following day. Yeah, I take it all back. Going to the dentist sucks.

Posted in Life, universe and everything

5 comments

Jen - May 22, 2011 - 3:40 pm

This has happened to me before. I would never last being tortured with a drill bit in my mouth. I’m not a fan of the dentist. I try to take really good care of my teeth too so I can steer clear of anything more than a cleaning.

bluntdelivery - May 20, 2011 - 10:37 am

ok. you’re about to feel better about your life.

i haven’t been to the dentist in like 6 years.

and i have terrible teeth. i am quite sure i have cavities in every one. and i’ve already had a root canal.

i can’t help it, i hate the dentist. it always KILLS with pain. i just hate it. and now i’m too ashamed to go cus it’s been so long.

hello veneers!

Jennifer - May 17, 2011 - 11:28 am

Fabulous! Love the drooling part. Hope you feel better.

Graethel - May 17, 2011 - 3:10 am

I will tell you my horror story about my wisdom tooth. I happend some years ago. I went to the dentist for a cavity and after the X-ray we also found out one of my wisdom teeth was ready to come out. The big problem was that we did not choose to normal direction, he told himself: “no, I’m the cool one here, I will try to get out differently”. Yeah, the normal direction was rotated 90°, heading the other teeth and pushing them… So it was necesary to get it out, because sooner or later it would have started to hurt. So I got a date for a … little intervention which involved cutting through my ginge and get the anarchist tooth out.

After the anesthesia and the cut, the dentist used something like a stick with a thick steel needle, he put that somehow under the tooth and pressed hard in order to make it jump outside. And he tried that for 20 minutes, no results. My tooth just wanted to remain there.

Do you know what he did next?? He took a horrible instrument, much more horrible then the drill, and started to CUT me tooth into half. THE HORROR! I feld blood beeing sprayed into my mouth. Then he took the tooth out, actually the two pieces of my tooth. He closed that incision and yey, after 50 minutes I could get up from the chair.

I was really brave during the whole thing, but when I got I up, I set on a normal chair and I started to cry like a baby in order free myself from all the nasty feelings I experienced. Not to mention that two weeks after that the half of my head was still swollen…

Since that day normal cavities do not scare me anymore.

CriCri - May 17, 2011 - 2:29 am

Oh, poor thing ! Sorry you had to go through that. I had a similar experience about 3 years ago. We were days away from going to RO, and I was simply eating when a bit of a molar came out. It was literally like a slice of a round cake, the cake being my molar, neatly broken out. I could see the blackened core of it. But nothing hurt. So we went to Ro, came back, and I went to the dentist. Had been years for me too since the last time.

She found a few tiny cavities but said I’d probably need a crown(?) and we’ll fix the rest later. So she took out the mega huge syringe equipped with the oh-lord-needle and she simply climbed next to me and was pushing into my gums like crazy to get the right nerve. Took her 3 shots to numb my left part …and the sensation is exatcly that: slight tingling and not feeling what you’re controlling.

Then she cut the top part of my molar and with an even bigger needle, she climbed again (I’m not tall when I’m lying down though?!) and she was basically leaning with all her 70kg on the needle filling my roots with cement. I was only feeling the pressure and wondering: will she manage to break my jaw? Anyway, then I went back to work, a week later came back so she can mount the crown. But nothing hurt in between: obviously, she really closed up those nerve endings.

I closed my eyes every time, through the cutting, the filling, the molding… do not want to do that again…

Hope you’re recovering OK… and that you don’t get hooked on that Sorry about the long answer