To tell the tooth

[sigma7]

It's taken me a while to decode dentist-speak.

"Mild discomfort" means, of course, pain.

"A little pressure" means stabbing pain.

"This won't hurt a bit" means "I'm an awful liar, but I'm trying."

And if they say "Well, okay, this is gonna hurt," get out of the chair and get to your car before they can bolt you down. If they stop you, go for the eyes. That's where they're weakest.

Comments

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Eh, depends on the patient. Some people are more susceptible to dental pain, some less. I stopped getting numbing shots for major dental work because drilling and stuff simply doesn't hurt me enough to be worth the hassle of a numb face for the rest of the day. Which is good, considering how much work I've had to get done.

Ditto...

[ravenskye8.livejournal.com]

Really depends on the person. I have a friend who's a real wimp and needs nitrous to get a teeth cleaning...

Personally, I keep asking _not_ to get novacaine... all it does is numb my face, but never my mouth... so I get to feel all the discomfort anyway... and then spend the rest of the day waiting to get the feeling back in my nose...

I figure I made it through a root canal without assistance... what could possibly be worse than that?

Re: Ditto...

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

I figure I made it through a root canal without assistance... what could possibly be worse than that?

Only two things, in my personal experience:

-- Getting a tooth cracked and half and extracted.

-- "Crown lengthening," which strikes me as a euphemism; it's actually where they cut open the gum and push it back into place after it's swelled up too much.

But I've inherited a phenomenal resistance to -caine meds, so a typical dose just bounces right off, and to get me at all numb, instead of one-shot-and-wait-10-minutes it's more four-shots-and-wait-a-half-hour.

I consider myself something of an explorer of dental pain. An agonaut, if you will. (Still, a root canal? Nothing to sneeze at, to be sure.)

[iamstillthemoon.livejournal.com]

And "Please stop crying so loudly, I have a new patient I do not wish to scare away," means "SHUT UP OR I TAKE AWAY YOUR INSURANCE!"

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

I'm waiting for my dentist to just lose it at some point and say that, even though I've never (to my memory) cursed at him to his face. Unlike some dentists who managed to make my "die in a fire" list.

And your icon is...bewildering, if cute.

[iamstillthemoon.livejournal.com]

The icon is so true!

[patchsassy.livejournal.com]

If a dentist ever said "This is going to hurt" I'd be asking for a tranquilizer.

[missmiah.livejournal.com]

I don't remember having my wisdom teeth removed, I believe I was unconscious at the time. I do remember telling the nice nurse-type person that if they wanted to put an IV in they were going to have to strap me down and perhaps gas me first as I have a "thing" about needles.

They laughed a bit, but humored me with the nitrous.

And then the screaming started. My mother, who was waiting in the lobby at the time, told me later that a very harried looking nurse had to rush to shut every door between the lobby and my room, and that I was screaming something about the doctor being a hack and if he didn't stop poking me with the damn needle I was leaving. Or throwing up.

I, of course, remember very little of this.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

I can understand, though, how everyone else involved finds the incident permanently ingrained in their memory.