Spyret's Blog

— CONTENT WARNING for medical talk (emetophobia, needles, anesthesia, tooth extractions) —

Today’s song is an arrangement I’ve worked on for about a year, so if you want, you can sit here for a minute and listen to it, because I am very proud of it. It’s a little long. It won’t loop, so you can focus on the actual story.

But when you’re ready, I’m alive and no longer drugged up. Let’s talk about the root canal I had yesterday.

So, in case you don’t know, I have a certain flavor of PTSD (diagnosed) that has a lot to do with medical trauma. Which is why I have been vocally not excited about this procedure I’ve never had before, and I had no clue how it went before it happened. I was shaking like a leaf the whole way there, but in my opinion, I was doing a really good job of keeping it under wraps… nobody here knows I’m mentally ill…

Well, we got there, and I waited in the waiting room for about 10 minutes, when they called me in there, turned on this 90s sitcom called FRIENDS, and took X-rays of my teeth. It reached back really far in my throat and made me nearly throw up… but the worst part was them actually giving me the anesthesia. They told me it’d hurt, to which I said, “haha, okay, dentist people! It’s nothing I can’t handle!” but, NO, it really hurt. It was just this huge needle that slammed into the roof of my mouth and kept digging its way in. I felt like Tobey Maguire getting venomed. It was really not fun. And my whole mouth swelled up, so I was sitting there for about five minutes struggling to swallow my own spit while clapping to that intro.

Then they actually started doing the thing. I sat back really far and they put a balloon over my mouth, with something to keep me open inside. And, since the tooth was very far into my mouth (in the very back), the balloon stretched so far to surround that tooth that I was just stretched to oblivion. No, I could not feel anything, like they promised, but they started like they had time to lose, and that I was going to explode if they didn’t do it quickly. So my nerves were very heightened, and I had my eyes closed so I couldn’t see much, and it reminded me of another time I was numbed in a very flat chair while doctors were doing things to my face… ugh.

They said it would take around 30 minutes, so it was a half hour of drilling and sawing and weird pops that felt terrifying. I kept expecting a sting of pain with everything I was hearing, and the pressure I felt instead was more foreboding and anxiety-inducing, somehow????????????????????? When I did open my eyes, I saw bits of my little tooth being whisked away by pliers. They were dismembering my tooth in front of me!!

Somehow, it reached a midway point, and the dentist said, “you’re doing better than I thought you would for a newbie!” Haha. Yeah. I felt like I was doing really good. I felt amazing, actually, thank you for asking. I should have brought my valium. The parts that felt the best, even though I couldn’t feel anything, was the air they kept blowing down into my mouth. At least I knew then that they weren’t yanking anything out.

I couldn’t tell you when they actually started filling it, but it couldn’t have taken as long as the extraction. They didn’t want to get rid of the tooth, because the bone was good, whatever that means. So they kept little parts of it, and filled my root with… what the hell is this in my mouth, plastic? Probably? Anyway, the dentist said, “we’re gonna polish this off now,” because at the moment, I could taste something very fruity and chalky, like medicine. But after that, I didn’t taste shit. What did they do to my fruity and chalky replacement plastic tooth? Is it still with me…? Is it still there under all that smooth, normal-tasting polish? Will I ever be the same again?

I thought I was done after everything when they took the stuff in and over my mouth out, but then the dentist handed me a thick black thing that looked like a gum wrapper. And, again, like he was going to die in three seconds, he said, “bite this!” and shoved it in the back of my mouth. I bit it, and it CRUNCHED. It scared me, but I didn’t have time to be scared, because he said, “grind it!” Like a fucking bop it??? So I did, and then he took it out, WAY too fast. But I could see it had bite marks, so it was probably just a tooth test. I say that for my own peace of mind.

Anyway, for the rest of the day, I was on some crazy shit and half my face looked like it had been slept on. I was very numb, and my mouth was crazy swollen. I couldn’t even feel one side of my nose. So I rested, played Roblox, did nothing, ate pasta (thank God I didn’t have any food restrictions) and rested some more. My gums are a little sore now, and the roof of my mouth still hurts where they injected me, but I’m fine now.

I hope I have more normal stuff to talk about tomorrow!

Until next time. ❤