The dental emergency

Good morning! I hope your morning is going better than mine. It’s just 8:30 a.m. and I’ve already visited not one, but two dentist’s offices this morning.

You see, my tooth broke in half last night while eating dinner. You’d think I was eating rocks, but no… I was eat a piece of pita bread.

If you have ever had this happen, you know the sinking feeling I felt as I’m chewing, and feel something VERY odd in my mouth. I knew right away what had just happened. Bad, bad, bad…

I immediately called around to the local dentist’s offices, but it was already 5:10pm so they were all closed. Thankfully, one office down the road from me did return my call that evening, and set up an appointment for 7:30am the next morning. I should have gotten a clue, though, that they wouldn’t actually be helping me, when she said she only had 30 minutes. Uh, ya. Okay.

So, I get to the first dentist — Dr. Armstrong at AARM on Beach Ave., and he immediately put me in a panic. According to him, apparently, the tooth could be:

a) fractured and needing to be extracted
b) infected and life-threating
— apparently that tooth is right near a blood vessel that has no valve on it, so infection could spread to the brain
c) needing a full root canal and crown (read $$$$$$$)
d) will probably need to be replaced by a bridge (read $$$$$$$)

Are you kidding me?

Oh, and he can’t actually do any of the work. But, you see, he isn’t charging me for the info, either. Instead, he books me into yet another dentist of the same AARM practice down at the other end of Yaletown.

By this point, I’m in panic mode. Am I going to lose the tooth? Will I get an infection in my brain and die? Will I deal with hours and hours of drilling and still lose the tooth, anyhow?

Not good, Dr. Armstrong. Way to put an already panicky patient into a frenzy.

By 8:30am, I’m in the other clinic, awaiting my appointment, after calling Barry, who gets even more panicky than I already am. (note to self, do not tell your fiance, a thousand miles away, that you have potentially a life threatening dental issue… NOT good)

But, thankfully, Dr. Numerow was far more grounded. He took another 4 x-rays (and his dental assistant didn’t mess around for 5 minutes trying to get them done like the previous clinic), and put my mind at ease. That tooth already had a root canal done years ago, so he was going to re-treat the existing issue, and re-build the tooth. Eventually, he said, he would put a crown on it, but it would easily wait a short while (my wallet thanks him).

No brain infection. No extraction. Just some drilling for nearly two hours.

Oh… And the much-anticipated needle that I hate so much? Dr. Numerow maneuvered the scary instrument in such a fashion that I didn’t even see it go in my mouth, and didn’t feel it at all. *Tanya claps with glee*

So, yes, the day started off bad, but I think I’ve found a new dentist that I can trust — No thanks to the first one, other than for the referral.

…Tanya