Canal-ed

Yes, it's official. I have now undergone my first root canal. Contrary to popular opinion, it really wasn't all that bad. The worst part is that it was my very farthest back tooth, so my jaw hurt like the dickens.

**WARNING- Graphic Details of Operation Below**

Besides the jaw issue, I thought the process was really cool. He basically took a tool and I guess ground off the top part of my tooth (yeah, it smelled). Once the canals were accessible, he had all these little needles - about 1 or 1 1/2 inches in length - that he'd basically move up and down in the canal - in a sense, scrubbing it clean. Imagine how you'd take a bottle brush (to use a very pertinent analogy) and move it up and down in the bottle. Same idea.

I have some seriously long roots, by the way. The before and after comparison is quite interesting, as the new "filling" (some rubber material) shows up really well on the X-Ray. So, after much scrubbing, he then took these cool little white things (maybe the composite) and stuck them down in the canals. Those were then followed by some reddish looking mini-toothpicks (there's no better way to describe it).

The best part was, after shoving like 5 of those red things in each canal, he then had is assistant fire up some kind of bunson burner, at which time the Doc would heat up his tool and hold it on the top of the red things, which would then stick to the tool and come out. Pretty wild.

Oh, and while he was doing all the digging in my canals, he had some machine that would beep- supposedly telling him if there's any gunk left in there. At one point, I thought he was done digging around, until he tried to shove the white things in, which wouldn't go in one hole. So he had to do some more digging.

But, I'm none the worse for wear. Just ate some grits, and Ang is making me some Jello jigglers. And I'm starting to feel my tongue and lips again.

Next comes the crown, sometime in September.