On Wednesday I left home around 8:30 for the dentist appointment scheduled for 9AM. On Monday they told me that it would just be “a quick 30 minute visit to get two teeth filled” and since they all acted very casual about it all I figured I would get out by 10 and be to work by 10:15, all ready to conquer the day.
HAHAHAHA! Boy was I naive.
First of all, the dentist office doesn’t unlock its doors until 9AM, so my 9AM appointment was actually at around 9:30. When I got into the dentist chair I had to choose my filling type, and they eventually got around to giving me my first two novocaine shots, one on each side of the mouth near the cavities. The dentist said he’d leave for 5 minutes to let it take effect. He was gone for about 10 minutes; I could hear him talking to another patient who was also getting a filling.
Upon his return, he started drilling.
“OUCH!”
“You can feel that?”
“Uh huh!”
“OK, I’ll work on the other side first.”
“OUCH!”
“Alright, I’ll give you a couple more shots of novocaine and return in 5 minutes.”
Of course 5 minutes turned into about 15, he left me to complete the other woman’s fillings. The drilling hadn’t even started but I was already sweating, enough so that I was sure I’d need to go home and change before going to work, and feeling unnaturally anxious.
When he returned he took a pick and poked inside a cavity on the right side.
“AAaaarg…”
“You can feel that?”
“Yep”
“Not just the scraping? It’s a pinch?”
“It’s definitely a pinch.”
“OK, I’ll give you another shot of novocaine, this time in the back. This should put EVERYTHING to sleep.”
This final shot also hurt a lot, and still is sore this Friday morning.
He scraped on the left side and I felt nothing, so he proceeded with that filling. When he started drilling I became nauseated. Oh brother.
I toughed it out and got the fillings done, it was around 10:30 when I finally was able to leave the dentist office.
I felt terrible. I later learned that novocaine has a whole bunch of side effects and I was lucky enough to experience a couple of them. Not to mention the whole mouth numbing thing, the right side of my tongue was asleep (a fun experience) and I could barely talk. I decided that the best plan of action would be to take a sick day. I left a voicemail for my boss (which must have been an amusing thing to listen to) letting her know I wasn’t coming in.
I went home, complained on IRC for a bit, drank water through a straw so not to dribble it all over myself and eventually spent the day watching movies on the Myth box. There are lots of things I could have been doing instead (like catching up on reading people’s journals) but I just felt miserable. It wasn’t until 2PM that the novocaine finally wore off and I got to really feel the pain of the novocaine injection spots. I was hungry, having not eaten all day. When Michael got home he took me out to Sly Fox for some ravioli.
It was a fine meal for my hurting mouth and the beer wasn’t bad either. Oh geez, look at me, I took a sick day and then went out to a brewpub! Don’t tell my boss. We brought our laptops along to take advantage of the free wifi they offer and I was able to chat on IRC with
I went home and watched more movies. It was one of the most highly unproductive days I’ve had in months.