I had a bit of a problem over the holidays with a tooth. It was sensitive to cold drinks and ice cream and, well, anything cold. So I waited for it to go away. I don't have many cavities, and haven't had one in many years. I brush well...got me one of them new fangled Braun Professional 'lectric tooth-a-ma-brushes.
So I called the dentist. "We can schedule you for January 29th, or you can come in tomorrow on our emergency schedule." Hmmmm, wait three weeks or get in tomorrow? So I went in immediately.
Outcome? The toothache was probably caused by clenching. Stress.
Why the pain? I must have clamped down hard to bruise the nerve. The nerve takes a while to heal. When bruised it is sensitive to cold and to a certain extent hot. If it was something worse, they'd see a crack and my symptons would be "when I drink something cold it hurts for five minutes." Worse situation/sympton would be "when I drink something hot it hurst for five minutes."
Good to know.
They took a few xrays with a cool digital camera device. I asked the girl who did the x-ray if she could email them to me, noticing the images output to a computer screen running Windows. Ain't it easy to email pictures using Windows? Apparently not so easy for the layperson: when I asked the doctor, he said, "Oh, yeah, well I think it can email the xrays, but we haven't set that up yet. You're really the first person who's asked!"
I was going to tell him I wanted the xrays for my blog, but if he didn't know what a blog was, there's always that uncomfortable silence, you know? So I didn't mention the blog, but I did get the xrays: Before I left the doctor printed out a copy and gave them to me.
I wonder how much that will cost...?
Hey, anybody got a scanner?
