i'm tired of these Kafkaesque dentist appointments [Part 1]

my wife and i moved states right after getting married just over four years ago. When you move, you gotta establish where you will go for doctor appointments. In my case, i thought about dental work. I felt I had some cavities in my furthest-back molars. but I was working part-time, so if I wanted to have dental insurance, i would have to get it entirely on my own. (I at least got health insurance). There's a university by where we live, and after talking to an aunt who both lives nearby and works at the university, she recommended I go to the dentistry school, which would be a lot cheaper than going to a full-on dentist.

So, without any dental insurance, I made an appointment for a cleaning and x-ray check up. I had some cavities in my back molars, on the top, the left back molar and the right back molar. So bad, I would need to either get root canals on each, or them removed, or I could root canal one and remove the other. I had a bottom back molar removed out of my mandible many years ago, so I decided to get its opposing top molar removed, which would be a lot cheaper than a root canal. The other molar, I decided to get a root canal on. And that's what happened.

I knew a root canal was going to be expensive, so beforehand, I looked into getting my own dental insurance. But for some reason, it couldn't be put into effect for a few months. So, I bit the bullet (with my rotting teeth) and payed for the root canal out of pocket.

Root canals are terrifying. Getting a shot into my gums. Tools pushed into my mouth. Metal tools rubbing my lips, chafing them. Teeth fragments chipping away. A gaping hole in my tooth. Jaw held open for the better part of an hour. And the least of which, hundreds of dollars out of my bank account. The dental assistant put me in charge of holding the liquid sucker. That kept my mind occupied :)

I had to get a crown on my freshly root-canaled tooth. I was only given a very temporary filling after the root canal. I still needed a crown. So, yet another appointment later, I got a crown. Yay I'm done!

No I'm not. That was a temporary crown. Better than the temp filling, but not good enough. Problem was, they need to attach the final crown to my bone, my skull, but my gums were too big back there. So they had to do a little surgery to pull back my gum skin.

That was probably the worst one. A crown extension, I think it was called. It was also the one that I waited on for the longest. This was a dentistry school, after all. Not perfect, and it took weeks, maybe over a month to finally get that appointment. At one point, I took matters into my own hands and stopped waiting for a call, and called myself. I could barely explain what I needed. In the call, the receptionist, basically, repeated what I had said to make sure she got it right. She called it a "jaw extension." Ughehaiuwghiulweayu... That imagery gives me chills. That's body horror right there. I mean, needles in my gums and metal tools chafing lips is bad enough. I don't want to imagine what a jaw extension is nor why a person would "need" it.

Well, I eventually got the crown extension surgery. As I said, that one was probably the worst. I was in so much pain and trauma afterwards, it lasted long enough for me to still be viscerally affected by it throughout my drive back home. I collapsed and cried in the kitchen. And I fucking had to got to work too. I had a new manager who didn't respect my requests for time off as much. I don't remember if I asked for the full day off or just the first half of the day, but she cut it close. I was definitely late. I had to be at work at 2:30 (tooth hurty).

Anyway, yeah, the crown extension was horrible. My gum skin was so sore. The tool that sucked up liquid was fucking metal. It sucked itself to my skin, the skin inside my mouth so much. It poked so hard. My mouth was held open for so long. So many metal tools rubbed and chafed my lips. Although this is my third mention of it, this was my first awareness of it. I was so glad I brought a chapstick. They had some vaseline, but at least I didn't have to ask, ask with my hands. No way to speak when my mouth looked like a knife block.

They numb you, but your body still experiences what they do after the numbing. Whenever I'm ever posed with the question of what time period I'd like to live in, even before all this, I first consider health and dental technology. Does this time period have anesthesia?

Your body still experiences what they do after the numbing. I was awake and aware the whole time. So yeah, I cried in my kitchen at home afterwards. Cursing my new manager, but that was the least of my frustrations. but it didn't help. Oh, and I still needed a final crown. They just put in a new temporary crown.

(Some time during all this, I got my other top molar, the one on the mirror side of my skull, extracted - which is a lot faster than a root canal. And by then I was a little used to dental work. I got to keep the tooth. I still have my wisdom teeth. ... No, not in my skull and mandible. In my possession. My extracted tooth joined that collection. I have a tooth collection.)

Final crown. Still no health insurance. I could get a porcelain crown which would look like a natural tooth, be less expensive, but be less longer-lasting than the other option. A gold crown, made from real gold, does not look natural (doesn't match my style, I know some people would think it looks cool) more expensive, but lasts much much longer. Lasting longer is better. I'm not gonna fall for the ol' trick pulled on impoverish people. It's better to buy a really expensive thing once, instead of a cheap thing so many times it's accumulative cost ends up being more than the long-lasting expensive option ;) ALSO, it was going to be in the back on the top. I'm pretty short. NO ONE is going to see it! :D So, I got a gold crown. There are people who I interact with a talk with every day who I'm pretty sure have no idea.

Shots and tools and holding your jaw open for long periods of time is is own kind of dental horror. Body horror. Gore. The aftermath of getting used to your new mouth is another kind of dental horror. Psychological. Probably also body horror. The gold crown they gave me, yeah, technically fits with my other teeth when I close my mouth. But it's big where it can be. It feels like a very different shape than the natural tooth it replaced. One time, many years ago, I left my family dentist with filling on the crown side of a premolar. As my mouth de-numbed, I realized the filling was tall and I couldn't comfortably close my mouth. So I promptly made an appointment to get that fixed. I have held onto that fear, and related fears ever since. The aftermath of dental work, My new teeth shape. How people get plastic surgery or whatever else completely baffles me. You were really that miserable with your natural face that you grew up with, so you changed it? And you didn't even have to?? - Ok, I understand there are some such surgeries that are rather necessary.

My top back molars were finally done. It took the entirety of 2022. In September that year, I got promoted to a supervisor position and got dental and health insurance that kicked in January 2023.