Teeth almost done!

WARNING: The following entry concerns a surgical procedure carried out upon myself by a dentist, and goes into graphic detail to describe my experiences during said procedure. If you have a weak stomach, or are averse to long posts, please do not read on, as you will not like what follows. If you don't mind long posts, and find pain and suffering amusing, or if you're just plain curious, read on! This is the second post in a saga of suffering at the hands of trained torturers - for reference, I suggest you refer to the second part of the first post, which describes the instruments used herein - you can find it here.

Yes I woke up at 10am today.
Then again at 11.
Then 12, 12:30, 1:30 and finally I got out of bed at 2pm. I had to dig out the dentist's number because I suspected I had an appointment today, though between you and me, I halfheartedly hoped I'd missed it. I spoke to my family about it though and apparently the dentists had in fact already phoned up yesterday to remind me that I did in fact have a 3:30 appointment.

So off we went, leaving my sister and nephew in the park for a bit, I ran along to the dentists, and proceeded to pace the waiting room for 15 minutes, nervously waiting to be called - I hate going to the dentists, always have...

Now - time for a dull little bit of background. One day at swimming, I noticed something didn't feel right, so I had a close look in the mirror to discover that the second molar on my lower left side had suddenly lost a chunk. A lump of tooth about 3mmx3mm had suddenly and randomly broken off that tooth. Well that was a few months ago and over the months, that tooth has been eroded more by drinks, had more tiny bits breaking off, and had been scraped away by brushing - the end result is a second molar, with a quarter of the crown broken off, and a full third of the center of the tooth missing - you could stick your finger in there, it was that bad.

I spoke to my dentist who said that she might be able to fill it, or that it might have to come out. Of course, after the last time I went to the dentists (see below somewhere), I really wasn't keen to have another tooth smashed into little bitsies and dragged out sideways, so it was with profound relief on my part, when I sat down in the chair, that she explained that "we're going to do a couple of fillings today".

Anyway, out come the plastic protectors of the witnesses of suffering again (Yes folks, they're back!!!), and onto my head they go. Of course, they'd steamed up to the point that they went opaque within a couple of seconds (I am hot - literally!), but not before I'd had the blood collecting bib of pain tied around my neck!
Out come the spiky needle of death, carrying its deadly cargo of befuddling poison of sleepyness!
Bang bang, two shots, one lower, one upper, and not a very happy me in sight.
I sit up, rinse the extra out, taking special care not to spit everywhere this time, and then BEFORE the stuff has taken effect, she lowers the seat again!
"What?!" I think, "she's not going to start before the anasthetic is she!?"

Of course, she wanders off and does a couple of things, before returning with everyone's favourite tool, The Buzzing Mechanical Hornet's Sting of Death! By this time, the anasthetic's taken hold, as she happily drills into my upper teeth, I think "hey this's not too bad, I can hardly feel anything. This's not bad at all". I sit there daydreaming, as I realise with a shock that I'm almost HAPPY to be at the dentists! But then out from nowhere, back from the deepest darkest recesses of my nightmares, she comes out with another tool. One that I've known about for years, one that gave me nightmares, I spose, one that got me into this mess...

Yes folks, see the long handle, the tiny pointed tip on the end, you could almost be forgiven for thinking this is only another dentist's drill. But oh no, it's not - see the rounded spherical tip, see the hardened burrs corkscrewing around it, this is the Corkscrewing Burr of Grindy Death!

She sticks it in my mouth, I feel it disappear into one of my teeth, and next thing, my entire skull starts vibrating, as this bloody horrible tungsten carbide thing grinds and grinds inside my tooth with a horrible GRAWAWAWAWAWAWAW noise that I more feel than hear. Damn I hate that thing, it really is the most hated dentists tool imaginable. I reflect on how much I hate it as my mouth fills with the horrible taste of powdered tooth...

Anyway, this goes on for about 20 minutes, she's alternatley drilling my teeth and then taking the CBoGD to them, and I'm really not enjoying myself. Meanwhile, her colleague is helpfully standing by with the Life Sucking Cleanser of Fragments, and the dentist comes out with another device, something that looks like a blunt hypo, sticks it in my mouth and does something, I don't know what, maybe blasts cold water at my tooth, or maybe cold air? not sure.
In any case, the Springy Punch of Nothing Much, as it is now known, is okay with me as it doesn't actually seem to do anything much...

Dentist then gets a strange square thing with a screw on one end, as she takes her hands out of my mouth I manage to mumble "that looks scary" - "it isn't", she says, "it's just a collar to cover the hole I've made in your tooth" - oh okay, let's call it er, the Non Scary Collar of Covering.
She eventually manages to get it round my tooth and tightens it up, to the point where I'm worried my tooth is going to implode.

Anyway, eventually the instruments of torture are downed, and I hear this horrific grating noise from my left - fortunatley, it turns out to be some kind of filling-making machine, as the helper helpfully helps by helping with passing another instrument, much like the Springy Punch of Nothing Much, but presumably filled with amalgam filling. She squirts a load of filling in, using the Squirty Springy Filling Squirter, scrapes off the excess, gets me to bite down on it to compact it in the hole, and that's us pretty much done...

So, now at 5:53 PM, almost 2 hours after the befuddling poison of sleepyness went in, I've still got a numb left-side of my mouth, but, I found to my amazement that the tooth I was worried she was going to have to extract, is in fact one of the teeth that she filled! Way to go, she saved my tooth!!

So now I'm in a good mood, eating the most bloody atrocious chips from "Les'Al's Plaice", reflecting on the fact that my so called doomed tooth is saved, and trying to get the god awful taste of amalgam filling out of my mouth...

PART TWO - ADVANCED PRACTICAL DENTISTRY!!!

As with the first instalment of this fascinating compendium, we cover the various instruments of dental torture used by our highly experienced medical professionals. In this section, we detail the newer instruments that have not previously been described - so let's start!:



2:1 - INSTRUMENTS OF SUFFERING

• The Corkscrewing Burr of Grindy Death! - This is probably the most evil instrument of torture. Much like a dentist's drill, this is actually used to file lumps off patient's teeth. As a bonus, it causes extreme discomfort by filling the patient's mouth with tooth-dust.
  

• Springy Punch of Nothing Much! - I don't know what this does. It might squirt air or maybe water into a tooth cavity, then again, it might not.
  

• Non Scary Collar of Covering. - This collar goes round a patient's tooth. Presumably to cover holes made in the tooth by other torture methods. It is also useful for tightening around someone's tooth until they fear the tooth will implode, much like thumbscrews, but with teeth instead.

• Filling Making Machine - This is a machine that makes filling. It doesn't come into contact with the patient. Harmless and therefore uninteresting.

• Squirty Springy Filling Squirter! - This squirts liquid filling into tooth cavities. It doesn't even cause any pain at all, unless the dentist jabs the patient in the eye with it.

Anyway, it's been emotional.
See you soon!