Dentist Visit

133 Views Wed, 06 Jun 2007 at 10:42 pm

For some people, the notion of having to make a dentist visit is frightening enough –even just– to be imagined. Not me. I am really eager to make my appointment to the dentist tomorrow morning .

My (bottom side) wisdom teeth start to appear like 7 or 8 years ago. From the outside, they look rather fine, meaning that they look like to be able to grow normally in vertical direction. There is a slight problem though. I suspect because they have not completely grown (What? 8 years time are not enough? ) some parts of it are still covered with gum.

This gum is supposedly become an ideal place for the food remains to hide below. In my last dentist visit two years ago, the doctor explains to me of how to brush the teeth, especially the wisdom teeth. Brush them gently with the tip of the toothbrush so that even the area under the gum can be reached and cleaned. He recommended a small size toothbrush to do the job. Very small indeed that I often mention it to my wife –she’s an avid user of this kind of toothbrush ever since the doctor also told her how to brush the teeth properly– as toothbrush for baby (or to emphasize more: toothbrush for a baby mouse ).

Well, for the exceptions of few and forgettable pains, this last two years passed without problems. Sometimes when I failed to pay special attention to these areas, the teeth gave early warnings. Negligible pains that, with one or two careful brushes and gargling using Listerine, will eventually go away. Not the one on last Sunday though. The pains stay, and it got worst. Something must have been very wrong.

I called the dentist on Monday and got the appointment only for Thursday. At night, the pain became worst, thankful for Ariawan for giving me some Mefenamic acid to relieve my pain. Advised by my wife, I showed up anyway at the dentist office the next morning for an emergency visit. Lucky that he was available to look at my tooth. Unlucky that because his schedule was full, and my gums were clearly badly infected, he couldn’t do anything except cleaning it up, and then applying some medicine to the tooth (whether it was only to close up the area under the gum or there were some kind of antibiotics in it, I am not sure). And the last thing he said is I should be patient should the condition is not getting better .

Too bad, the pain was still not subsided away after that. I am now religiously chew up the pain-killer pill every 8 hours or so. I’d be very glad to see my dentist tomorrow morning and let him do anything he think best to fix my tooth and relieve me from this pain. Hope for the best tomorrow … now is the time to sleep before the effect of the pill is over and the pain comes back to haunt me .

Additional Notes:

The wisdom teeth entry on Wikipedia provided very interesting and insightful information.
Do you know that only 5 percent of populations have healthy wisdom teeth? (I am not going into the debate of whether they are useless part of the body or some kind like that, as I believe that God has created human as a perfect creature) and 25% of patients with wisdom teeth have considerable infection around this area? Please keep your wisdom teeth checked so that they can stay healthy.

Images were taken from here and here.