I Heart my Dentist

Last Sunday I posted about the horrible timing of my wisdom tooth suddenly deciding it was time to make itself known.

Short version:

Saturday night my teeth started hurting WAY more than it usually does. My upper right wisdom tooth has bothered me off and on for the past few years; usually I pop an Aleeve, maybe rest for half an hour until it kicked in, and I'm good to go until the next time.

I knew something was wrong this time by how intense the pain was this time and by how the Aleeve was not helping at all. I did finally manage to fall asleep that night, only to wake up the next morning, Sunday, with the exact same predicament. Much more pain + no working medication + continued pain even after a full night's sleep + holiday weekend = me calling up Kaiser for an urgent care appointment to get me some pain killers until I could see my dentist.

Kaiser was very nice to me. They gave me Amoxicillin, in case of infection, and Vicodin, to keep me from wanting to rip my own ear off from the pain.

I learned an important fact through this experience: Vicodin makes me tired. So very tired. I felt like I had not nap all the time. Including at work. It was horrible how out of it I was all week.

Luckily, I got in to see my dentist on Thursday afternoon. I was pretty apprehensive going into the appointment; after all, what possibly good way could all this work out? They were just going to tell me I needed to get my wisdom tooth out, I would tell them I a) don't have the money since insurance won't cover crazy things like that yet, and b) am getting married in a week and can't be miserable from getting my wisdom teeth out.

It pretty much went down like that. Except, after my dentist and her assistant got over the shock that I was getting married next week, my dentist is all "all right, we'll just do it here."

Excuse me?

Which is what I said.

She explained my tooth was neither impacted nor fully underneath the gum, so she could easily take it out. Right then and there, in fact.

There was still the matter of insurance however, and my dentist had the receptionist call Aetna to discuss matters. She came back in to let me know I only had to pay the deductible and $40. What?!

So I got my wisdom tooth out.

It took all of ten minutes to numb me up, a minute to put in a movie (Marley & Me, because my dentist's office rocks), a few minutes to clean my teeth while we waited for the numbness to settle, and about three minutes for that tooth to be gone.

All these years... who knew it was easier than getting a cavity filled?

It's been about five days since, and it still hurts off and on, so I'm still on the painkillers. Had a really great nap on them yesterday. I try not to take them when I'm working, because nodding off in front of students isn't the greatest example, you know. Yesterday I started chewing on the right side of my mouth again; you never realize how much you miss using your whole mouth until you can only use one half.

So hopefully I'm back to 100% and off the Vicodin by this weekend. As you all know, it's going to be quite a busy and eventful few days. :)