Retraction

On the other hand, I will take the root canal over the "prep and build-up" any day! Wow. That was a REALLY long and not painless procedure. My appointment was at 10:00am. Because I live between the office and the dentist I totally lazed out and didn't go in to work beforehand. The assistant (Mike) guessed it'd be about two hours of work - they had to remove the temporary filling, shape the tooth, take the impression for the permanent crown and then install the temporary crown. I've had a crown put in before. I figured I'd be to the office just after lunch. Then the poking and the drilling and the grinding and the stretching and the "open bigger, bigger, really big now" started. I glanced at my watch at noon and hoped we were almost done. Then the desk staff asked when they could have the room as there were patients out front who'd been waiting an hour! That was at 1:15 and I knew I wasn't going anywhere soon. The dentist said I was a "really tough case" with my "really small mouth" (they had to use the kid sized mouth plate to take the crown impression - great.) and my "big tongue." Lovely. Just what a girl wants to hear from a cute guy. (Dentist: totally cute. Assistant: not too bad either. How did I notice this being nearly upside down? Well, lets say that I had very little else to do the entire time.) The dentist totally earned his fee on that exercise. At 3:00(!) I finally got to sit up again, and then nearly fainted when all the blood rushed from my head. Five hours in the chair - the anesthetic had worn off before I left the place! Call me a wimp or whatever but I called the office and told them I wasn't coming in. My head hurt, my mouth hurt, I was exhausted... Really the whole day was a blur of pokey metal objects and throbbing.
And guess what? In two weeks I get to go back while they pry this silver one off and try to wedge the porcelain crown in under the gum tissue. Oh yay. Can you tell how excited I am for that experience?

This is me a newly anointed oral hygiene fanatic. Floss anyone?