Dee leaving KL and a root canal!

This morning I dropped Dee off at the train station and waved her goodbye as she boarded the bus for the airport for her flight back to Melbourne. From there I tried to find my way to the Endodontist's office for my root canal - yuck!

I finally managed to find the office and went upstairs. While I waited, they handed me a colour brochure of what a root canal is and why it needs to be done. As I was reading this, panic was starting to set in! My loathe of dentists came back with a vengeance.

I got into the dentist's office and he took time to ask me about my situation and then explain what he needs to do to confirm that I do in fact need a root canal. He did several tests on me including a tap test where he used the end of his mirror to tap on my teeth. I almost jumped through the roof when he hit my cracked tooth! He also sprayed cold water on it - also incredibly painful. He took an x-ray as well and used a UV light to show up the cracks in the tooth.

He took me through all the results of the tests and basically said I had two options: have the tooth extracted or have a root canal. He also explained that although the root canal will take away the pain and save the tooth for now, in the future, the tooth may crack more and eventually have to be removed anyway. But we decided to go ahead with the root canal as I didn't have time to do anything else before traveling to Aus tonight and the pain was too much to bare.

As he was explaining the procedure to me, I felt myself go all pale and clammy. I haad to sit down for about 15 minutes before he could start as I felt very faint. Not sure why as I wasn't actually too stressed but I guess the tests that he had done already had made the pain really bad in my tooth and made me feel all woozy.

Anyway, I pulled myself together and he started the procedure. First came the anaesthics - two massive injections on the inside and outside gums surrounding the tooth. We waited 10 minutes until it took effect. I was then fitted with a rubber damn that completely covered my mouth so none of the chemicals etc. would fall into my mouth.

Next was the drill. He drilled a hole in the top of my tooth until he got through the enamel into my nerves. Thank god I couldn't feel anything! From there, he injected more anaesthetic directly into the nerves - completely numb now! He also found that I had four nerves running down into my gums rather than the normal three - great - nothing is never simple with my teeth!

He then worked on filing away each of the nerves with tiny little files about the thinkness of a needle. This took time as he had to check he reached right to the bottom of eacch nerve and one of them was particularly difficult as it was very curved at the bottom. He showed me the four tiny holed I now had in my tooth after he had finished filing away the nerves. Next step was to fill the tooth and finally I had a steel band wrapped around the entire tooth to keep it together (see photo).

Two and a half hours later and he was finished. But this was only the first stage and I will need to go back two more times to finish the procedure and then go back to my normal dentist to have a crown fitted to the tooth as the final step.

So around 4 o'clock I drove home completely exhausted. I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to relax but also finished the packing for Aus. Ross came home about 5.30 and we did some last minute things and had dinner before heading to the airport for our flight.

On our way to Perth!