Motivation.……

It’s hard to be moti­vat­ed at night. Espe­cial­ly when your used to hav­ing so much time off (yah know, slow hol­i­days). But now that work is pick­ing up, you just don’ t feel like work­ing. But you know you must.

Speak­ing of moti­va­tion. It has been hard to write dai­ly or semi-dai­ly on this blog. I just haven’t had much to report. But I will con­tin­ue to try.

Yes­ter­day I had my first Root Scal­ing and Plan­ning appoint­ment with my den­tal staff. They are fan­tas­tic! It always amazes my wife and I how they know who we are with­out look­ing at a chart or schedule.

I walked in and Eri­ca knew who I was and how ner­vous I am about den­tists (this is only my 2nd appoint­ment) and she put me at ease and asked how I was. She assured me that they would take care of me. I remem­bered to give her my new insur­ance info and she was thank­ful that I remem­bered (most peo­ple seem to forget).

Katie then came and got me and to start our 90 min­utes of fun! Let me go back a minute to my first appointment.

I was extreme­ly ner­vous about going to the den­tist (and my wife just mak­ing the appoint­ment and not ask­ing me first did­n’t make it any bet­ter.) She had her appoint­ment ear­li­er that day and warned them about me and made sure they knew how ner­vous I was. I was so ner­vous I made my sis­ter take me.

So I walk in, and before I even say any­thing, Eri­ca knows exact­ly who I am and instant­ly puts me at ease. I wait a few min­utes (the rest of the staff was fin­ish­ing a meet­ing) and then Katie comes and gets me and gives me a tour of the place. Which, by the way, is a beau­ti­ful build­ing. On the out­side looks like a cab­in and the inside is a very upscale look­ing cabin‑y motif. I real­ly like it.

Katie shows me to our room and starts the ini­tial exam and clean­ing. After doing a few inspec­tions, she takes pic­tures of my mouth and shows me where I have some buildup and how red my gums were. The results… I had a bac­te­r­i­al infec­tion. So we would not be doing a clean­ing. It would be too painful and she would­n’t be able to real­ly clean. So we decide on a Root Plan­ning and Scal­ing (2 appoint­ments — 90 min­utes each).

So she does the rest of the inspec­tion, and then off to anoth­er room with anoth­er assis­tant (I can’t seem to remem­ber her name though) and she takes x‑rays of my teeth.

Then the den­tist comes in. A very nice guy who (like me) loves music. He is hum­ming and stuff and I am try­ing not to gig­gle (my wife warned me that I may not be able to con­tain myself). He then pro­ceeds to explain to me that my teeth are in pret­ty good shape.

When I bite down only 2 or 3 of my teeth touch and that will be a prob­lem as I grow old­er (Amaz­ing­ly enough, they don’t show a lot of wear though — he says it is because my tongue keeps get­ting in he way). So we will dis­cuss get­ting that tak­en care of so that I don’t shat­ter my front teeth. Braces may be an ide­al solu­tion, but we are going to dis­cuss all pos­si­bil­i­ties. If he can get my teeth to touch in a few oth­er areas we should be good (He spe­cial­ized in Braces for years, so I feel real com­fort­able with his recommendations)

So back to the cur­rent appointment…

I walk into the room and I am hooked up to the gas. She explains to me what to do and asks me ques­tions to make sure I don’t get nauseous.

Once the gas takes effect, she numbs up my right side. I feel the pinch, but she wig­gles her fin­ger on my gums or cheek and I don’t feel the pinch as much. My oth­er den­tist nev­er did this. A few spots need to be numbed up a lit­tle more. She even had to numb up a lit­tle bit of my left side because when she was work­ing in the front I could feel it on my oth­er side.

So as she is giv­ing me that shot on my left side on the top, I grab the chair and push myself into the chair away from her, she quick­ly hur­ries and asks if it was painful. It was­n’t, but since it was at the top, I could feel it all going to my nose and all of a sud­den I felt like I had to sneeze, I lit­er­al­ly had to take a huge breath to get the feel­ing to go away. All I could think of was, “OH MY GOD, DON’T SNEEZE WITH A NEEDLE IN YOUR MOUTH!”

After I am all numbed up, she pro­ceeds to check my gums (we could­n’t do that at the first appoint­ment because I was too sensitive–Man, that makes me sound like a wuss!) Then pro­ceeds to clean my teeth. I can’t feel a thing so it goes real­ly quickly.

A fun­ny thing hap­pened dur­ing the appoint­ment. She had me lis­ten to a radio, but I could­n’t get the FM to work. I would flip to FM and get noth­ing. Dur­ing a break, I ask her if I can bring my iPod to the next appoint­ment. I pro­ceed to tell her that the radio she had me put on sucks. I meant to say the radio (as in the sta­tions) suck, not that indi­vid­ual radio. But since I was­n’t think­ing clear­ly, I said, “because THIS radio sucks”. I pro­ceed to tell her I am not a radio guy (hence buy­ing the iPod) and that the FM does­n’t work. She tells me it does and flips a switch on the side. Here I had been push­ing the on-off but­ton. No won­der it was­n’t working.

On my way home I was think­ing about that con­ver­sa­tion and real­ized, I was kin­da snot­ty! I am going to apol­o­gize at my next appointment.

Once we are done, she asks if she can try and take a few x‑rays over (we had prob­lems get­ting my roots on my back teeth at the first appoint­ment) so I said sure.

After that, I was lead back out to Eri­ca who gave me my paper work and then I sat in the lob­by until Amy came and picked me up!

When I got into the van Amy kept gig­gling when I would talk or she would tell me to smile and then gig­gle. The novo­caine was still going strong so half my face would­n’t work and it looked droopy so it made the oth­er side of my face look like I was smil­ing. It looked fun­ny! The kids were gig­gling every time I would talk.

Once we were home I wait­ed a few hours until I could feel my teeth. I still could­n’t feel my lips, but I decid­ed to try eat­ing. I was hungry.

I grabbed my Turkey Bacon Chipo­tle sub from Davan­ni’s and pro­ceed­ed to try and chew on my left side. I usu­al­ly chew on my right (where my bite is) but I was hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty, food kept slid­ing over to my numb side and if any­thing got stuck between my cheek and teeth it was lost and I would try to fish it out with my half numb tongue and pro­ceed to drool.

Drink­ing out of a bot­tle of pop was a dif­fer­ent mat­ter. I had to put the bot­tle to my lips and on my numb side I had to stick my fin­ger against my mouth to make sure I closed gaps. I stilled dribbled.

I had to go to work, so I took a few more Advil and went to work. By the time I got there, I felt fine, but I could still feel the nee­dle in my gums. Kin­da like when you get a shot in the arm. It feels sore and you just can’t get com­fy. But as the night went on, it seems to be more con­stant so we left ear­ly and I went home and went to bed.

Today I feel total­ly fine, occa­sion­al­ly my gum will feel sore. But oth­er than that I am okay!

Well, I think I am long wind­ed enough. Til Next Time.