Thanks. They do not have an emergency dental clinic here even though it is the largest city in the state. Go figure. Last December I broke a tooth and then had the fillings fall out of an adjacent tooth so the nerve was exposed from the loss of the filling. I went to HealthPlus and they gave me a rx for codiene & an antibiotic. I called several different dentists in the area checking prices. The cheapest was $250 to remove each tooth (wisdom tooth is impacted so depending on how the roots lay it might have been three total to extract) plus $150 for xrays and it would take six weeks to get me in and then they would assess and reschedule me later for the actual treatment.

I had an appt scheduled in Jan with a student dentist in Morgantown which is a three hour drive each way but the student clinic only charges for material costs but unfortunately on my appt day we got six inches of snow so I had to cancel. I tried to tough it out but food would get in the crevice where the nerve was exposed and I had to scrape food out so it wouldn't get infected and let me tell you what scraping a nerve is not much fun but it had to be done. Of course putting benzocaine directly on the nerve reduces the pain for a short while but you can't get the benzocaine onto the nerve until you clean out the food. The upside is it hurt so much to eat that I lost thirty pounds from December - February.

I finally had reached my limit and knew that the school of dentistry had an emergency clinic in Morgantown on weekdays. Technically I didn't consider my problem an emergency. When I think dental emergency I think of somebody who has had facial trauma and lost a tooth that needs to be reimplanted emergently. But they don't define it that strictly so I hopped in the car & drove three hours & they xrayed it and then sat me in the chair. The whole thing was very assembly line. Everybody had their job and they did it quickly and did it well. One dentist did the xray, another injected the novocaine and then another extracted the tooth. I was sitting there with a 4x4 gauze on the wound and he asks me if the other needs to come out. Well gee I don't know. Perhaps it could have been saved with a root canal but I knew they wouldn't do that then so I shrugged and mumbled I guess and he took it out. And the total cost for everything was only $200.

But even though my pain was approaching my limits this week I know I can't use the emergency clinic in Morgantown for a root canal because that is a longer more involved procedure. Quite looking forward to my student dentist doing it soon though.

I actually slept decent for about five hours. I have a headache still but I think it is probably referred tooth pain so doing the tylenol/ASA thing so far and won't use codeine unless it is quite bad because codeine is hard to come by so I make them last. Hoping I don't have to inject the gum again because even though it worked there still is a small risk of infection but glad to know that I can play emergency dentist at home when I have to. Good thing I am not afraid of needles, I guess.

There is probably no one else in the world looking forward to a root canal more than me right now. Reminds me of Steve Martin in Little Shop of Horrors and Bill Murray with his maschochistic dental obsession. I am so there.