calherewecome

The absolute worst time to get a tooth ache is the Saturday of a long weekend. So Saturday morning, I woke up with nasty tooth ache on my #3 molar (upper). I tried taking Ibuprofen for the pain. Didn’t come close to easing the pain. I hung on until this morning to call the dentist. The receptionist set me up with a 11:30 AM appt to see Dr Tooley.

Then I got a call from the receptionist asking if I could come in bit earlier. I said no problem. I’m on my way.

I checked in and was shown into the treatment room. Hey, I said to dental tech, this room is backwards. Is Dr Tulley a southpaw? Yes she said, indeed he is. In all of my many years of visiting dentists, this the first time that I have ever seen a left handed dentist. I told him I wouldn’t hold it against him.

So in talking to Dr T, I found out he came from Agawam MA and went to UMass Amherst and Tufts Dental School. So we talked a bit about baseball and the pitiful performance of the Red Sox and life back in MA.

So the technician, does some x-rays and Dr. T pokes and prods. We narrow it down to problem area. It seems that the tooth in question had had root canal sometime in the past. I think about 10 years ago. The second tooth from the left on the x-ray is the one that had the root canal. You can tell it by the lines roots that are all lit up.

So I had choices, another root canal or yank the tooth. I choose the root canal. So the receptionist made me an appointment for 1:30 in Torrance. I figured either way it will cost a bucket of money.

So on my way to Torrance I had some time to kill, so I had the oil changed on the Jeep in preparation for our trip to Lompoc this weekend.

I got to the endodontist at about 1:00 pm. A endodontist is a dentist who drills down deep enough to get to your wallet. So, I had to fill more paper work out. It was about 20 pages of gobbledygook. That finished, I got into the chair. More x-rays. Couldn’t you use the x-rays from Dr T. Oh no, that won’t do. Bah.

So Dr Kwon, finishes the drilling which lasted about an hour. It felt like 4 hours. So we schedule a follow-up for next week. He gives me 2 prescriptions. One for pain and one for antibiotics. Back next week to drill some more. The pain is beginning to ease somewhat. So I had to pay for the prescriptions completely. Pharmacy doesn’t take Kaiser and Kaiser won’t fill Rx’s from doctors outside of Kaiser. Luckily the prescriptions weren’t too much.

So, once the work with the Endontist is done, it will be back to dentist to get a new crown. $$$$

So I finally was done. Got home at about 4 pm. Took a pain pill and laid down until Mike and family arrive.

All done.

This entry was posted on September 8, 2015 at 9:13 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Dentists, Root Canal