posted on Tuesday, Jun. 06, 2006 @ 23:48
happy june 6th. yeah, whatever. to quote my mom, "last i checked the number of the beast was 666, not 060606."
the most evil surrounding this day was my endodontist appointment. i haven't gone into detail about the nightmare that is my mouth, so let's get some illustrations in here!
i had my wisdom teeth taken out last month or something, at which point they had to take a panorex. it's a pretty sweet x-ray that spins around your head, and it gives a picture that (appears to me, at least) a little bigger than life size. maybe it's life-sized and i just don't know how big my face it from the third person. it cost $90, of which i had to pay $71, so i took it with me.
those four lights behind it are the vanity lights in the bathroom, and you'll note i positioned it so two of the filaments looked like eyes. (: and of course you can spot my various pieces of metal; i had to take my tongue ring out, though. the numbers on my teeth are, duh, the numbers of my teeth. those are the ones that need to be worked on.
when i went to my general dentist to get a crown on tooth #3 (the one that had the gum surgery), i brought this along with me. my oral surgeon said offhand he could tell #18 needed a root canal, but that there were others that could be a potential problem. did my dentist so much as look at it? i don't think so. i was staring at the ceiling the whole time, but he was working in my mouth most the time. turns out, the tooth he put a crown on had an infection and needed the root canal therapy to be retreated. so today my endodontist had to drill through my $375 crown to fix the canal infections. so help me god if i get charged for any repair to my crown. so help my dentist, rather, because i'll raise fucking hell. he didn't say anything about my other five infected teeth, even though he took several x-rays of #3. alan williams, jr. fuck him. unfortunately i've got to keep seeing him because of my lovely HMO.
anyway, back to the gorey details, here are the digital x-rays my endodontist took when i first saw her on may 18.
the number of the tooth is on the upper left corner of the picture, and the infections are circled (a different color for each tooth). the most interesting (read traumatizing) is #14. this tooth had a root canal ages ago, when i was still in high school, but i never had a crown put on it. my parents' dental insurance would only cover $1000 a year in benefits, which is reached after only one or two procedures. even though i pay a little more per procedure, my insurance has no annual limit. that's the only reason i'm able to get this work done now, so i'm very proud of myself for making the right decision for once.
so, #14 had broken a couple times and been rebuilt by dr. williams (crappy general dentist). a couple months ago i noticed a tiny pimple (as my endodontist called it) on my gums near that tooth and a large bump on my hard palate behind it. after x-raying it, dr. williams said he didn't know what to make of it. he couldn't even see the nasty infection in multiple roots. dr. ganne (ga-NAY), my endodontist, inserted pliable [plastic/rubber/?] cones into the openings of these bumps. this was incredibly painful, as the area wasn't numb. she left them inside for a while, and i could feel the pressure release some. as you can see in the bottom left x-ray, i outlined the cones in blue. on the right you can see the same picture without my scribbles. these bumps were caused by drainage from the infection, and by inserting those cones she made the passage larger. and get over the grossness factor; it's not like there's shit oozing out. i never even notice anything. a human's mouth is the dirtiest anyway!
as a side note, the address listed on those pages isn't the one i go to; i go to the one in cedar park near the intersection of 183 and 620. that area is such a clusterfuck due to the construction. this is obviously not important, but it's the kind of anal thing i would point out.
four of these teeth (all except 18 and 4) have previously had root canal therapy, and two of those four have broken instruments inside a canal. when you get a root canal, they drill through the tooth to the opening of the root canals, then take a metal file and scrape out the root. that's what it looks like from my very experienced perspective at least. once i asked my dentist in longview, "what happens if one of those breaks inside my tooth?" and then it did. he didn't say one broke inside the other tooth, though.
in order to prevent future infections the root canals have to be filled completely to the tip. the broken file presents a problem because she can't get around it obviously. that canal merges with another, though, so hopefully she'll be able to go around it. if not, i've got to get surgery to get it out. UGH.
wondering how much this is setting me back? let me illustrate it for you.
obviously this one has been in my car for too long...
$1,098.90 with another $1425 to go. that's not counting my crowns, though. that will total anywhere from $1480 to $2520. there are two that already have old crowns, so i'm praying i'll only have to buy four.
all of this is so depressing, such a massive amount of money spent on my piece of shit teeth. all this could be like half of my part of a down payment for a house for one thing, not to mention it could almost pay off my car. i could just cry. bleh.
so that's it for now. i've got to go to the dentist tomorrow at 8:45, and unfortunately i volunteered to show up and run the mail before going. why didn't i just ask to show up late so i could sleep an extra hour??