Now to continue on with my root canal saga…

Now to continue on with my root canal saga (yes, it is a saga).

So, I was literally shoved out the door to have my root canal done. Everyone thought they’d have to drive me to my appointment to make sure that I made it and didn’t run off to somewhere else. Unfortunately, I knew that I would be really rude to the specialist if I did that so I didn’t run and hide. Although looking back at it, hind site being what it is, I should have called and canceled and then ran and hid.

Cutting my scaredy-cat story short, I survived my first root canal. It took the specialist forty-five minutes to do the root canal, which is longer than a normal front tooth root canal should take. No pain, no zings, nothing. There is just a bunch of drilling and filing to get the nerve out of the tooth, and then poking and prodding to fill it back in. No big deal. I swear. That tooth, as the story kinda goes, was feeling much better. But, my luck with root canals didn’t end there!

Oh no, it didn’t. I think it was two years later, I ended up with two more, and then some crowns, and then another root canal, and the rest is history (yeah, 2 more root canals and one more crown after that).

Now, with root canals, crowns are generally recommended. Front teeth don’t always need them, but your chewing teeth do. After getting a root canal, your teeth become brittle. You’ve just sucked the life out of them and they are dead. Dead teeth don’t get nutrients and life that they need from the nerve of the tooth. So, brittle teeth, chewing on things, sometimes harder than we’d like to admit, you can do some serious damage to a root canal tooth if it doesn’t have a crown. So serious, that all of the time and effort (and money) you just spent on saving your tooth in the heroic fashion it deserves will go down the drain. So it is always a good idea to crown your root canal right after getting it done. It’ll make your tooth last longer.

How to avoid root canals? Don’t get cavities, don’t chew on ice, don’t chew on hard candies…basically stop living life! Great, huh? But in all seriousness, cavities can lead to root canals, cracked teeth can lead to root canals, any sort of trauma to the teeth can lead to root canals. So do your best to prevent them, but sometimes living life creates them!

And as a side note – I don’t regret all of the fun I had in cheer and in dance, I do wish I had scooted my face back a little bit so I wouldn’t have been kneed in the mouth, but the damage is already done and as I keep reminding myself, it could have been worse.

More on root canals next time!