Getting to the root of it
I’ve been a bit quiet recently in more ways than one. Three years or so ago I had to have some root canal treatment. This is never pleasant and even less pleasant is when it doesn’t work and has to be repeated. It gets worse when the repeat doesn’t work either and the dentist looks at you as if to say here we go again.
Except that I bottled out of a third go at the same tooth, opting to give it some time to settle down and see what happened. Over time it didn’t get any better and my (new) dentist looked on disapprovingly and referred me to the local specialist at the dental hospital before things went downhill.
That appointment was last Friday and by unhappy coincidence it was last week that the problem flared up into an abscess. So at the hospital they took a good look at the tooth and the X-Ray which showed the pin from the last root canal op. sitting at an odd angle and made it clear that there was really no option but to remove the offending molar. He was going to make a referal back to my dentist but then checked his watch and said “or we can just get it over with now”.
And lo, the molar was extracted – which took a while because it became clear that one of the previous root jobs had split the root which was why there was a persistent problem. The root came out in several pieces, the last bit of which was quite tricky to get hold of apparently. I was well numbed up, of course, but the upshot was that I left minus a tooth but with stiches and antibiotics.
Recent Comments