I recently had another root canal, since I like having them so much. I’ve practically accounted, single-handedly I might add, for a college fund for my dentist’s kids given the number of procedures I’ve had in recent years. In short, I have a bionic mouth.
Actually, this is my fourth root canal, this one coming as a bit of a surprise to both me and my dentist during last month’s routine checkup. You never want to hear your dentist say the words: “Well, that’s not good” when he is looking in your mouth. The prior three came due to avoiding the dentist for years and not properly flossing.
“You don’t have to floss all your teeth,” a dental hygienist once told me. “You only have to floss the ones you want to keep.”
Wiser words have never been spoken. Kids, floss your teeth or prepare to spend thousands to fix them when you get older. Every root canal I have is a beach vacation or cruise I could have taken. Thinking of it in those terms makes it even more painful. Actually, the root canal has never hurt my mouth. The pain I feel is in my butt, specifically the wallet region.
So anyway, you’d think I would know everything there is to know about root canals after all this time. Not so fast. I actually did something that made me feel stupid this weekend. Yes. Me. Stu-pid. You won’t hear those words together very often.
The thing about root canals is they basically file away most of the affected tooth and then put a crown on it to protect the tooth. However, before you get the permanent crown, they put in a temporary crown while the permanent is getting made. In the past, I’ve not had any problems with the temporary. This time, though, was different given my loyalty to flossing a couple of times a day. Refer to the above saying from the hygienist.
So, anyway, I’m flossing when out pops the temp. I immediately call the dentist and his assistant said to just put some Fixodent on it and put it back in since my permanent will be ready soon. I did as I was told but the crown didn’t seem to go in right. I looked it over numerous times and decided it could only go a certain way.
Eventually I got it back in but then I started noticing it didn’t feel in there good. It was like chewing with a loose tooth and my bite wasn’t coming together right. Every meal was annoying as I would have to carefully chew since my bite wasn’t coming together. When I looked in the mirror, it appeared to be jutting out a bit from the others.
The next day I took the crown out and looked at it closely. Surely there was only one way it would fit. However, in the name of science, I decided to reverse it. Guess what? It was a perfect fit. I’d been walking around with my tooth in backward all day. They ought to give directions with those things.
Standard reporter Duane Sherrill can be reached at 473-2191.