Root canal

For several years my Louisville dentist has been pushing me to get “veneers” – essentially a new crown and a cover to an existing tooth. This year we appeared to have enough health care flexible spending money to do it. During the past couple of years I had to get 2 ½ root canals with crowns. The problems with my two front teeth go back to that Tokyo playground accident 35 years ago, somewhat botched dental surgery in Gainesville a year later, and then two more occasions in the past 20 years in which I’ve chipped one of those teeth.

But since I had the two veneers affixed last week, the tooth which mostly remains has been very sensitive to hot and cold and essentially hasn’t been able to touch tooth (let alone actually bite down). Today I went in to my dentist to ask about this, and also about this veneer jutting out somewhat. The dentist suggested I brush and floss more and use Sensodyne toothpaste and let it sink more. She identified two steps she had taken – other than shave back the existing tooth a little and disturb the tooth twice – shaving it and placing a temporary cover on it and then rmoving the temporary cover and affixing the permanent veneer – One was to laser the gum back a little to match the gum line on the all-crown front tooth. The other step was to coat the tooth with a substance with opened the pores to help the veneer stick. Both might make the tooth more sensitive.

But – because I am to go out of the country Friday – Dr. Burton went ahead and sent me right back to the endodontist I’ve seen two or three times, mainly for these root canals, for a “pulp vitality test,” which mainly involves applying cold substances and judging my reaction. Dr. Norton also took a second digital X-ray. No surprise to me – he said my reactions to the cold were off the chart – and a mark on his X-ray and my reaction to a little hammer-type pressure to the tooth suggested that deterioration was reaching the end of the nerve and the bone.

Then the question was whether I would get a root canal – which involves killing the tooth by taking the nerve out and filling it in with another substance – today, later in the week, or perhaps even after my trip. Dr Burton had thought Dr. Norton would give me antibiotic and let me wait until after the trip. But he was pushing me to go ahead, and when I found that Dr. Burton could get me in Wednesday morning to finish the job – by putting a permanent filling in part of the tooth that Dr Norton would drill out and called in to a client who had been set to met this afternoon trying to postpone the meeting a day or two – I said I would go ahead in 30-60 minutes after he had done someone else’s root canal.

Something else that swayed me – despite not wanting to have to be flown back from Guatemala to the United States – in the middle of our mission trip – was this: I thought that Dr. Norton would have to drill out the existing veneer cover and we’d have to do it all over again (maybe with both veneers – since they were designed to match). But Dr. Norton and Dr. Burton insisted that he could just drill a small hole through the tooth and preferably not touch the veneer.

After some more phone calls, I was back in the chair and Dr. Norton and his colleagues were relatively quickly doing the root canal – something that is apparently easier with front teeth, then the two molars I’d had root canaled easier. Last time the teeth were also apparently quite infected, and Dr. Norton had to just pump me full of novacaine so that the root canal wouldn’t hurt so much. This time that was not the case. Again, the whole thing is unpleasant – and I’ll have to get more painful novacaine shots at Dr. Burton’s tomorrow morning – and I feel bad killing this tooth – especially as a result of questionable actions I’d taken in the past (including perhaps this elective cosmetic dental surgery that I thought we could afford).

The root canal is done. I didn’t get back to work until 4:30 p.m. I had to postpone my important client meeting until Wednesday morning, after my dentist appointment. I went ahead and ate Chinese food at church, even though I had to be very careful because with the anesthesia still lingering I can easily bite myself, etc. I will also be taking pain killer and antibiotic through the start of the mission trip. We’ll see how my teeth and mouth behave by the time we travel from El Estor back to Guatemala City.

Pictured above is me and my two front teeth at the office of Dr. Norton, the endodontist, in between the pulp vitality test and the root canal.

-- Perry