Dental update!

Short story: the extraction went well. Yay!

Slightly longer story: after asking pretty much everyone I know a friend of mine agreed to be my 'dental buddy', so Cam could stay home with the boys rather than trying to control them in the waiting room while I had my teeth pulled. This was good, as it turns out the dentist had blocked out 2 hours for the procedure (in retrospect, wow, some extractions must be really grueling!)

Signed in, sat down in the chair, and I got my injections. They took affect right away, which was awesome. I had been a little worried that they wouldn't work on me, but they did just fine. In fact, by the end the entire left side of my face, up to my eyebrow, and including my left nostril (but not the right), was numb. That was a very weird feeling. The right tooth had to come out first, as it required digging around to find the root and he figured that would take the longest. Well, once he got it it came out in 4 pieces (and took a bit of the jaw with it; I felt/heard when the jaw fractured) and that was that. Then he moved over to the left and after a couple pulls, and the tooth deciding to come out sideways ("I've never seen that before!") we were done. Start to finish, I was walking out the door an hour later. I did scare them by standing up and immediately tripping over the base of the chair ("Are you woozy? dizzy? You sure? Really?""I'm fine, just clumsy.")

What did take a long time was picking up the antibiotics (which I apparently should have been on since my initial visit) and ibuprofen. He offered stronger narcotics, which I told him I didn't think I would need them, but if I did I would let him know and he would call in a script for me. So I wandered around Lowes with my friend while she ordered a countertop, then we went back to Walgreens, picked up my drugs, and home again home again, jiggity jig.

Since then things have been going pretty well. I'm down to about two pain relievers a day, when my mouth begins to feel sore, and have a few more days of antibiotics to go. I anticipate being able to eat some Thanksgiving food tomorrow (yay!) and then I get a followup appointment to see how well my mouth is feeling. It feels weird. I can FEEL that there is a big hole in my gum on the right side; I'm being good and keeping my tongue and anything else out of there, just keeping it clean, but still. Weird. Can't say I really miss the teeth though. New goal: Keep the rest of my teeth. This post brought to you by the adjective: Weird.

happily,
-nava