Nothing but the tooth

Previously when I heard people say that "the pain of a bad toothache is second only to labour pains", my first thought was "now, that is a statement invented by a man or someone who has never gone through 26 hours of labour".

Last night, I was unceremoniously schooled. After dinner I was suddenly besieged with the most intense pain coming from my left lower molar. At first I didn't really notice it, but then it started, surely and steadily, to increase in intensity and strength until it became a pulsating, throbbing, unbearable pain that left me practically unable to do anything other then breathe. After downing 2 paracetamols and 1 mefenemic acid tablet, my head still felt as if it just got hit by a tractor. Even applying lignocaine gel inside my mouth, gave me temporary relief and a numb tongue for 15 minutes after which the excrutiating pain would return.

I didn't fall asleep until around 5 am eventhough my amazing, beautiful kids were so well behaved that they went straight to sleep after I told them "syhhh...semua kanak2 tido yer..ummi sakit gigi" , even the youngest one seemed to understand, everybody just kissed me goodnight and fell asleep. I was tossing and turning and just whimpering in pain the whole night until magically the meds kicked in around 5 am but by then I had to get up for my daily morning routine.

After sending the kids of to kindergarten, I rushed to my dentist. Since it was only 8.30am, it wasn't open yet so I made a BIG Breakfast stopover (not my fault that McD was just around the corner, I had half an hour to kill). Since my regular dentist decided not to open at 9am as it was supposed to, I visited the one nearby. Thus began the horror known as "The nightmare dental visit".

The dentist was a young Indian guy, didn't really make small talk. Just got down to business. After expertly identifying the root of the problem he deftly patched me up and offered to do some scaling. Since it had been around six months since my last encounter with this excrutiating experience, I thought why not, I was, after all, already there. It proved to be a very BAD decision.

For the uninitiated, scaling is a process where the denstist will use a small drill type tool to scrape away the plaque from your teeth (well, this is my non-dental opinion, correct me if I'm wrong). Usually the scraping is done in stages. This particular denstist decided that it would be more "fun" to just do all my teeth in one shot. Plus, he totally ignored the cardinal rule of patient-dentist communication. It is universally accepted that when a dental patient, who cannot talk because he/she has metal intruments probing around in his/her mouth, raises their hand, it is a signal that they are in pain and would like a break. As he was busy attacking my plaque with full force, my hands initially were on my lap, then clenched into a fist, then I slightly raised my fingers and finally I actually raised up my hand into the "STOP!" position, but all my silent pleas for help were ignored. It took me every ounce of strength not to clamp my mouth shut or just jump out of that chair. After, what must have been a record breaking 3 minutes of scaling, I was finally released from the torture. (My previous scaling experience took closer to an hour, granted they were dental students but still, at least they had the decency to acknowledge my discomfort).

Totally in shock and shaken from my experience, I didn't even have the energy to shed any tears. I thank dentists everywhere for their incredible skill for taking away the worst of pain but do understand, I think any specialty that requires their patients to open wide and uses cold metal instruments, DEFINITELY not my favourite people. Enough said.