My Dentist Saved My Life
How a dental crisis gave me a much-needed wake up call
“You’ve got a raging infection in your tooth. We’re going to have to do another root canal, I’m afraid — it’s worse than the last one. I’m surprised you lasted this long with the pain. That abscess looks really nasty.”
Another root canal? Are you kidding me? I’d just gone through all this for a completely different tooth. I was on antibiotics for weeks, and thoroughly miserable, and now my dentist was telling me I’d have to suffer through all of that all over again?
Okay, no biggie. Despite a life-long phobia of the dentist, I had eventually managed to psyche myself up for the last procedure, and it ended up being a piece of cake. I got this. I got a prescription for antibiotics and away I went.
Two days later I shuffled back into my dentist’s office, white-faced but determined. I knew the worst of it was the local anaesthetic injection, and once that had worked its magic — seriously, thank fuck for modern anaesthetics — I’d be far less stressed.
A little bit of topical gel to get ready for the needle, and we were good to go. For my first root canal two months prior I’d needed a horse’s dose of local anaesthetic before I was numb enough to work on, so this time around my dentist came at it from all directions…
