Tooth #18

is now a big fat red X on my dental records! Unfortunately when I went into the dentist yesterday he took a very brief look at it and while shaking his head informed me that it was a lost cause. I had prepared myself for this, this tooth has given me grief for many years now, in fact I talked them out of pulling it about 6 years ago. And because of the fact that I had already had a root canal my regular dentist didn't want to the procedure, so he referred me to an oral surgeon. I went upstairs to the oral surgeons office and they said that they couldn't see me for a consultant until February 11th! I wasn't thrilled with that but I made the appointment and headed off to work. As soon as I got to work the office called me to said that she had a cancellation and she was thinking that maybe she could get me in for the consult AND do the surgery today. She couldn't promise that he would do the surgery today, but told me to come prepared, no eating, bring someone with me . . . so I went in not knowing if it would be just the consult or if they would actually do the procedure. On top of that I had a meeting this afternoon at work so I HAD to go back, which means that they couldn't knock me out, which is fine, I would not have wanted to be if it wasn't really necessary. My dentist warned me that the oral surgeons like to put you out because that is how they are used to doing, but he didn't feel I really needed to be.

So after a few questions he took a look at my tooth and agreed to pull it today! It was a pretty quick, I was in out out of the surgery room within 30 minutes. I could feel it a tiny bit and it's weird to think that they were pulling the entire tooth out. It's good that it's out, it was cracked and very badly decayed, so, this is definitely messing up the dental work plan for the year, so now I'll have to see where we stand. On top of the 3 crowns that I already needed, Dr. Dupree wants to pull the crown off of tooth 17 to make sure that the same thing isn't happening with that tooth too. So, now I need 4 crowns at about $1000.00 each.

So, that was my day, I did make it back to work for my meeting, so all is well!