I have one of the kindest, most empathetic dentists in Edmonton. She calls me in the evenings to make sure I'm doing okay, and is gentle (at least as gentle as a dentist can be) and understanding when I'm in the chair getting work done. There's only one problem... she keeps causing me pain!

(read more only if you're not turned off by dental work)

Yesterday, I went back to the dentist to get a tooth filled. We both knew that the cavity (cavern, actually... the tooth had chipped awhile ago, before I had dental coverage) was close to the nerve in the tooth, and was likely going to turn into a root canal.

She topped me up with anaesthetic, put on the dental dam, and started working away, taking away the decay... andI felt an ache of pain. We stopped, she put in some more anaesthetic, and we started things up again... and it hurt again...

So she brought out the big guns... an anaesthetic called Stabident, which is the most potent dental anaesthetic you can use, and gave me two doses. It was fine for awhile, until she started cleaning debris out of the area, where the anaesthetic just didn't take. We found this out the hard way, when she scraped and I ended up a couple of feet down the chair from her.

It turns out that my tooth was so inflamed that the anaesthetic wouldn't work. The rest of my jaw - hell, half of my face - was completely numb (in fact, for hours afterwards), but this one area of a few square millimeters just wouldn't take the anaesthetic. She'd also given me the maximum amount of anaesthetic allowable, which meant that any more either wouldn't help, or would have undesirable effects.

She decided, after consulting with the other dentist, that we'd have to hit the area with antibiotics and reschedule for a few days from now.

Only, there was a slight problem. Because she'd drilled down far enough, and found an area of decay, she couldn't cover it over with a temporary filling. Yet, because the tooth is infected and inflamed, she couldn't continue.

So the end result is that, for the next 4 days (until my appointment on Monday), I have a half-excavated tooth in my mouth that's very sensitive to pressure (ie: chewing), I'm on Penicillin-V four times a day, 3 advil every 4 hours, T3s if I need them (so far so good), and I have to take Ativan before I go in for my appointment on Monday (one of their theories is that my needle anxiety is a factor in why the anaesthetic isn't being as effective.

I'm so looking forward to *Tuesday*, it's not even funny.