Down In the Mouth

I hate going to the dentist. It's one of those childhood phobias that never went away. I get extremely nervous and anxious. My palms get sweaty, I get dry mouth - the whole nine yards. So, my solution to this phobia for the past year was simple: ignore it and it will go away. No, I didn't ignore my teeth, but I abstained from making my bi-annual visits. Unfortunately, my "solution" finally caught up with me two nights ago. While I was flossing my left back molar, I realized that something had just become dislodged in my mouth. Looking in the mirror, I realized that a filling had completely come out of my tooth. Now there is a large chunk missing from it.

Due to this unfortunate turn of events, I broke down and made an emergency appointment with the dentist for today. As usual, I got anxious, sweaty, shaky - the works - but there was no avoiding it, since I knew that I couldn't ignore the hole that was now in my tooth. Come to find out that the reason the filling popped out was because some decay started forming on another part of the tooth and pushed the filling off! The dentist told me that she had good news and bad news. The good news was that I came in to get it looked at right away. The bad news? It's possible that I may need a root canal! Great. Just the thing to fight this phobia of mine. I've been instructed not to eat or drink from that side of my mouth until I get it taken care of. So, now I'm going in on Monday morning (guess that means I can't do storytime at B&N - which I really love doing) to get the decay cleaned away (doesn't that sound pleasant??) and she'll assess whether I can simply have the filling replaced or whether I'll need to have a root canal. What a way to start a week....ugh...



Take my advice: never, ever ignore the dentist.