Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
comic strip overdue media

Thursday, March 27, 2014

I am convinced that, as YKWIA put it, I have mutant teeth (or, the dental saga continues...)

So last week when they did my crown prep they found a tooth had decay that apparently did not show up on the x-ray and they scheduled a root canal for this morning. Unfortunately, all did not go smoothly. This tooth has three roots (being an upper molar) and while two canals were able to be taken care of, one is totally calcified shut. This means that tomorrow I will be going to a specialist called an endodontist, who should have special tools to open up the canal and take care of the rest of the procedure. I found out I had a 9:15 am appointment at 4:50 pm today, so I e-mailed my bosses and hopefully everything will be fine. I am getting tired of going to the dentist and each time something else is amiss. I've been lucky in terms of no horrendous complications, but it's still frustrating. Today they had to just put the temporary crown back on even though it didn't exactly fit anymore due to the drilling, and they told me to chew on the other side as much as possible and they'd try to get me in to the specialist quickly, which, of course, they did do. There is no one in my insurance plan within 40 miles who practices endodontics, so I had to call my insurance company and request a pre-authorisation to see this out-of-network specialist, which they did give readily, at least. Sigh. Please tell me this will be over soon. I'm not thrilled by dental visits when everything goes right, much less when there seems to be layers and layers of problems out there. Yet we want to save this tooth because it will help the stability of the partial denture--which I'm still trying to get used to, as there have been some issues in having to adjust them so I can wear them properly. YKWIA thinks I have gotten myself locked into bad dentistry. I don't know about that. I did chastise the dentist this morning for not numbing my gums before shooting them with Novocaine. Maybe some people don't care about it, and I won't say it was unbearable without it, but he should have at least asked, don't you think? It's not like they didn't do that all the other times I've been there. :(

As an aside, YKWIA discovered while searching for calcification in teeth that one thing that can contribute to it is a disorder called ankylosing spondylitis, something I was vaguely familiar with, as it comes up at work (I work in a paediatric orthopaedic hospital). Not to sound like a complete hypochondriac, but looking at the symptoms, it might be something to ask my doctor about, as it involves chronic pain, especially in the back and sacroiliac joint, as well as in other joints, etc., etc. That's obviously vague, and those symptoms could be caused by other things, such as degenerative disc disease, osteoarthritis, or fibromyalgia/chronic fatigue syndrome (I have the first in my neck, the second in most of my joints, and fibromyalgia as well). But my back hasn't been imaged in 20 years except for my cervical area. I've had SI issues and some of the other listed symptoms, but sometimes things like this could be difficult to diagnose or have other co=morbid diagnoses. But it might be good to have it checked out because in rare cases it can affect the eyes and organ tissue as well. But it would be weird if I did test positive for the blood tests, was diagnosed, and it was all because of a blocked place in a tooth, wouldn't you say? Still, the fact that canals calcify with age may be the simpler reason.

Okay, tomorrow comes early. Off to bed I go, Good night.

No comments: