Open wide...

Day 93 

General status update: semi-root canalled, numb and woozy...

Not my actual dentist - she has much better headwear, obvs.

I’ve just had the root canal treatment – or half of it, anyway. It proved to be very problematic for the dentist as I apparently have an exceptionally small mouth/jaw and am unable to open it very wide, the tooth is right at the back, and getting access to the tooth with those long thin pointy things they use to burrow around in the root canals was extremly difficult for her, not to mention agonising for me as I struggled to keep my mouth open wide enough for long periods of time. She tried putting a small piece of scaffolding inside my mouth to hold it open, but that hurt even more.

Also, with the infected root still sensitive, I needed enough anaesthetic to sedate a small horse, which came in 3 separate instalments, with the dentist injecting a new and more powerful dose each time she poked something sharp deep inside my tooth and my body spasmed as I screamed.  

After nearly two hours, both the dentist and I had had enough: the canals are all opened up, and partially cleaned, but she ran out of time, and I was beginning to lose the will to live. So she’s put more medication inside the canals, which will kill off the nerves completely, put another temporary filling on, and the rest will now wait until my chemo has finished. The dentist is now talking about giving me some heavy duty sedation next time – the more out of it I am, the longer I will be able to keep my mouth open, and the better chance there will be of her actually being able to complete the root canal treatment. If that doesn’t work, then the tooth will have to come out.

I’m just glad of the temporary respite from more dental horribleness – and praying that nothing else happens to my teeth in the remaining 6 weeks of the final two chemo cycles.

The plus side of all this is that after the extreme unpleasantness of what happened today, having FEC5 on Thursday seems less daunting – at least they don’t make you hold your jaw wide open while they pour the chemo drugs into you.

And chemo doesn’t involved any drilling at all…