My Teef Hoit

I will not lie to you, friends. It’s been a tough few weeks. Do you want to hear my sad, sad story? No? Ok, then go to another site now. Or read a book. Go blast your quads at the gym. Do whatever you want, I’m giving you an out. It’s like when your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse says, honey do you want to go to the office Christmas party, you totally don’t have to, it’s OK. And you think, hmm, is this a trap or can I really not go to that party, I hear there will be caroling and dude, I’m Jewish I don’t know any of those songs except for Dreidel Dreidel and you know they will not be singing that, and your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse says no really, it’s an out. This is what I mean. It’s an out. You can leave now. I’ll even wait for a second while you leave because I’m nice like that.

Still waiting.

OK. Cool. Now that no one is reading this, on to my story.

As I mentioned before, I pulled a muscle in my neck. That sucked.

Then a few days later, I woke up with an ache in my mouth. I thought, whatever, I’ll just eat cereal and it will go away. Cereal solves like 68% of my problems. I eat my cereal, go to work, and by 11:00 in the morning, I’m in curled up in the women’s bathroom wanting to die. Toothache. It hurts so bad it hurts to think. It is like someone has punched me in the mouth and then blackjacked me on the left side of the head. (Blackjacking is when you fill a tube sock with rocks and hit someone with it. It sucks, dude. It happens to me at least once a week.) So, I call my dentist, he says, guess what? Sounds like you need a root canal. I go to a specialist recommended to me by a coworker because my dentist doesn’t roto-rooter.

I go to this dentist. I get xrays. This is what it looks like.

I have bad teeth, yes, I know. The one causing problems is the big white dude. There’s a crown on it. I just got the crown in December/January. It is a new crown.

He says, oh yeah, you’ll need a root canal, but I have some bad news. You’ve used up the deductible on your insurance (on the crown), so you’re not covered. Do you still want to get it done? I mean what am I supposed to say? Oh no, doctor, it’s cool, I’ll just live like this forever and never eat anything ever again except squishy bananas. So he doses me up with Novocaine, and then proceeds to leave me to work on other patients. He’s gone for forty-five minutes. I begin to take pictures of things.

All of this is going in my mouth:

This is what they do: They drill a hole in your tooth. In my case, they are drilling a hole in the $753 crown I just got in Dec/Jan. And then they jam spikes into the hole in order to kill the nerve inside it. Then they pull out the innards. That yellow crap is some kind of ‘medicine’ they shove in the hole to keep it from getting infected. It look like a booger.

So then the dentist comes back and says, oh I better give you more Novocaine, it’s been so long I bet the other stuff is wearing out. The man doesn’t know how to juggle patients, it is obvious. So he sticks me. And then leaves again. Half an hour.

I don’t know what these two machines do:

But, you know what I always say, “It’s not clean until it’s LeClean.” And I also always say, “Oh man if ONLY I had a sensimatic electrosurge, then I wouldn’t be in this mess.”

So he comes back, FINALLY starts to do work, over an hour I’ve been sitting in that chair wanting to die, and as he sticks a spike into my tooth, I feel searing pain into my brainparts and I do that thing where you wave your arms in the air and go MMMF MMMF MMMMF MMMMF and he says, oh you’re not supposed to feel it, I guess the novocaine is wearing off again. So then he gives me another shot. As he is working in my mouth, I feel this tearing pain in my neck, because as I mentioned, I had pulled a muscle in my stupid neck. When he’s done my entire back feels like I’ve been moving pianos to a fifth floor walk-up.

He puts a temporary filling in and says, come back next week and we’ll finish the job.

The entire next week, my toof still hurts. I am on extra special drugs and they aren’t doing much. I also drool at night. A lot. It’s gross. It’s like sleeping in mouth-pee. I do not understand what’s going on. My coworkers all say it’s not supposed to hurt, but, dude, I say, it hurts. It hurts to exist. I go back to the dentist. He says, oh? It hurts? It’s not supposed to…I guess it means you didn’t give any recommendations for me to your friends.

HE ACTUALLY SAYS THAT. When he looks at me, all he sees is a big dollar sign. It’s so outrageously offensive. I mean at least try to HIDE IT. What a ginormous prick and a half. He’s trying to play it off as a joke, but it’s not funny. At all.

He says I guess I didn’t get all the nerve tissue out. We’re gonna have to do more. More root canal. DUDE! More! Root! Canal!

This is where I want to burst into tears, but I’m so angry I want to stab him with that hook scraper thing. You know what I’m talking about. The Hook. Rip his guts out of his mouth. From what I understand you can see all that stuff on the xray, so he could’ve seen that he hadn’t gotten it all out, if he had just taken some more xrays.

So. He goes back in there, and digs some more canal. It is like Venice up in my grill.

The whole thing will cost me about $800.

So basically I paid this guy $800 to screw me in the mouth and the whole thing took HOURS to complete, even though it should’ve taken an hour. Seriously I clocked in two appointments that were almost three hours each.

This is on top of the $2500 computer I just bought.

That is my story.

Oh, and I have to go back next week to get it filled.

14 Responses to “My Teef Hoit”

  1. Tamara P:

    Ohhhh honey that sounds so awful. :-( I’m going to go floss my teeth twice in fear now.

  2. Steve:

    You sure you didn’t do something to piss off the coworker that recommended this “specialist”?

  3. alice:

    Aaargh.
    Now I’m even more scared of dentists than usual.
    My teeth are hurting in sympathy with yours.

  4. Debora:

    Set up a PayPal donation site. I’d send you money.

  5. Sandy:

    Your dentist sounds like a hack! I’ve gotten 3 root canals - YES! and none hurt. Use my dentist - he has the latest technology and never makes you wait.

    http://www.smilesbydrwei.com

  6. weirdo:

    oh man, poor annie! that was seriously a painful post to read, and it only got worse and worse. my toof hurts now.

  7. Grace:

    That is why I haven’t been to the dentist in 5 years. Also, my previous dentist was this weird Korean guy who smelled funky and whose hair looked like a skunk’s tail.

  8. Ms. Bizarro:

    This sucks wazoo. Get a chunk of his arm hair next time and make a voo doo doll out of it. Seriously, I’m sorry you had to go through this. <:[=]
    (unhappy toof guy)

  9. D:

    To share in the experience of dealing with fascist dentists who take pleasure in causing people pain i’ll tell you my experience for comparison. So last summer I went to get a root canal, and my dentist like yours takes a few patients after having injected me with novacaine. I wait 45 minutes. She gets back and is ready to start in, however I inform her that the novacaine has worn off, to which she repiles “oh no, i’ve only been gone 10 minutes” I argued but it was useless. It was only after I screamed and kicked over the little metal cart that she injected some more novacaine.Which she repeated to do so about 7 times throughout the procedure, because she keeps wandering off. So when she’s finally finished prodding around in there she takes x-rays for the insurance company. Her assistant comes in and informs her that she has inserted the little needle things in too far, she would have to start again… But instead she decides to retake the x-rays for two reasons, 1) to cover her ass so she woouldn’t have to re-do it, and 2) to fool the insurance company into paying for her faulty procedure. So i’m thinking this bitch, but I figure she’s the dentist right? Plus I really did not want to go through that process again, so I didn’t even bother. A couple of months later I am told my root canal has to be re-done, but my insurance has been cancelled, and with the economy the way it is right now, i’ll be lucky if i can produce a smile half as shitty as the Mona Lisa’s. So I guess i’ve been fucked by the Dental Association of America. Oh well at least I have a valid reason for taking painkillers that allow me to see jesus and big bird duking it out steelcage style. I guess the only thing you can do is hope someone blogs about their experiences, and you can bask in the fact thet their lives suck more than yours right? jk, lol… kinda… :)

  10. Ramon:

    geez annie, that sucks! I take back all of the things i said to myself about how much annie sucks, how she never blogs anymore, hasn’t finished the next book yet, loser, and so on.

  11. hez:

    you might as well go and live in England.

  12. jon:

    Sure, I’d probably take a root canal over the fist up the ass…..but mostly for prides sake.

    Annie I think your brave.

  13. Alanna:

    i wish i didn’t read that. i have to get my wisdom teeth removed this summer, and now i think i’ll keep them. however, i have a funny story about my friend who got her wisdom teeth removed.

    my friend jacqui had to get her wisdom teeth removed our junior year (i’m a senior). now, jacqui is very tiny, standing 5′2 in flats. when she went to the dentist, apparently they gave her the standard amount of laughing gas, which is a little too much for my dear jacqui.

    during the procedure, the nice assistant lady asked jacqui if she had a boyfriend. now, number one: why would you ask the patient questions when their mouth is jammed with metal objects and your fingers? and number two: why would you ask someone under laughing gas?

    jacqui’s response? “Doctor Carlo [her dentist working on her] is my boyfriend. we’re in loooveeee. i love you doctor carloooo!” and started stroking his nasty italian arm hair. the nurse, not knowing what to do, just said, “oh. uh huh…” and kept going.

    jacqui, however, did not stop lovin’ doctor carlo. the rest of the time, she confessed her love to doctor carlo, and made up stories about how they’re going away to mexico.

    when it was all over, jacqui’s mom was asked to escort her through the back door, so she doesn’t scare (or hit on) any of the children in the waiting room.

    and now jacqui never wants to return to doctor carlo ever again, and has successfully avoided the dentist since.

    the end!

  14. damion:

    seriously i am in the dentist chair right now as my novocaine wears off waiting on the bitch to come back and give memore because shes seeing other patients. googled “do all dentists juggle patients” and your blog cameu. this is fucking miserable.

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