I went to the dentist a couple of weeks ago and, while he was poking around in my mouth, he found a cavity in the side of a tooth that wasn't even showing up on x-ray. It was under a filling. "Lovely," I thought.
I got home and I started thinking about how if it didn't show on the x-ray, then there was no way to know how big it was without just going ahead and filling it, right? I didn't really think anymore about it at that point.
Fast-forward to last Friday when my tooth began to hurt off and on. I asked my dad, who has had four root canals, what it feels like if you need one. He said that it would hurt a lot. It was kind of a dull ache and it seemed to only hurt at the end of my day. I took some Tylenol and thought that would take care of it. I had an appointment to get it filled on September 8 after all.
Well, it hurt all weekend. It hurt all Monday while I subbed for a Sophomore English class. It hurt Tuesday when I subbed for another Sophomore English class. I called the dentist's office Tuesday afternoon and asked if they could squeeze me in, soon. Then, I went home and googled "root canal" and "root canal symptoms." What I saw scared me because I had some of the symptoms.
I went into the dentist's today well informed and scared to death. He gave me two shots of novocaine and started drilling. He drilled off and on for over twenty minutes. I thought that drilling the old filling off would take a while and I was right. After those twenty-plus minutes of starting and stopping, he pronounced it a run-of-the-mill cavity and not even that big of a filling.
I should maybe not google these things. I scared myself a lot. At least, I didn't look at the pictures though!
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