I went to my dentist on Tuesday, knowing that there was decay in one of my upper left teeth and hoping that it was just a cavity that he could fix quickly. It wasn’t. After the dentist did some drilling, he said, “There’s some bleeding. I have to see if it’s from the gum or from the nerve.” It was from the nerve, which means the decay is too deep for just a filling. The best case would have been a root canal. It turns out that there’s not enough tooth left above the bone to put a crown on, so it would need gum and bone surgery to expose more tooth. And there’s not all that much of that tooth left anyway, so it might not last. The alternative is an implant, which wouldn’t be much more expensive (I hope!) than the root canal, crown lengthening surgery, and crown. So I’m going to have that tooth extracted and get an implant. Meanwhile there’s a temporary filling in that tooth. The dentist said that it can go two ways: be fine, or turn into a toothache. So far it’s been OK.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I went to my dentist on Tuesday, knowing that there was decay in one of my upper left teeth and hoping that it was just a cavity that he could fix quickly. It wasn’t. After the dentist did some drilling, he said, “There’s some bleeding. I have to see if it’s from the gum or … <\/p>\n