Today I had my appointment to go get my permanent filling at the UZ dental office.  I got up at 6:30, hauled myself out of bed, and took the bus to the UZ all by myself, cause I’m a big girl now and I can do some things alone in Gent.  Anywhere else in Europe, probably not, but in Gent I’m at the point where I can manage.  So I got the UZ, walked down to the Poly 8 building (a.k.a the dental building), enjoying the cool morning air and the quiet that went along with it.   I checked in, no problem (I even told the check in lady “I have an appointment at 8 o’clock” in Dutch and she didn’t switch to English! Well, until she gave me further directions, then I had to ask for it in English) and got myself a chair in the periodontal chop shop, just like last time.  Back in April, when we asked about this follow up procedure we were told it would be quick and painless.  Wrongo!

The dental student came over to me around 8:20, I know this cause my appointment was at 8 and I was getting antsy and had just checked my watch.  She got me all set up with the little paper bib and everything, asked me to take off my glasses, and got right down to drilling out the temporary filling.  There was an aid or something sitting on the other side of me and they were talking together in Dutch.  I didn’t catch most of it, although I think they were talking about the long weekend we just had.  Personally, I wanted my student to pay attention to the drill and my tooth, not her weekend, but eh, she’s human right? So then the aid sneezes and starts blowing her nose.  She does this several times, occasionally digging up into her nostril to get the hidden booger or something.  I would have been okay with that except she NEVER CHANGED HER GLOVES.  I wanted to say something about it, but her hands weren’t coming anywhere near my mouth, so I figured I could wait and if she did try to touch me, I’d say something.  Then the spit sucker nozzle came loose and fell on the floor. The aid picked it up and cleaned it with some sort of antiseptic…although she was still wearing the same gloves.  I was not thrilled, but she had used antiseptic, so any nose germs probably died and I kept my thoughts to myself.

After a while the aid left and the student drilling on me was ready to go into the canals in my molar.  To do this she first had to put the fun clamp around my tooth with the rubber flap that is meant to keep saliva out of the open tooth.  It was pretty much like reliving the root canal at this point, only with less pain since the nerve was already gone.  One big difference though was that this student, unlike the one that did the root canal, got her supervisor for EVERYTHING.  Every single thing she did, she went and got the supervisor while I laid on the chair which was reclined all the way back so that I was slightly upside down with the ungainly rubber thing clamped to my tooth.  I started getting a headache from being upside down and my back was aching.  On the second or third visit from the supervisor the clamp came off and he mercilessly jammed it back on, way too tightly.  I noticed it was tight but I figured it couldn’t be much longer.  It had already been over an hour and they had said this was short an painless.

Two hours later the student allowed me to get out of the chair and stand up because I was now beginning to squirm and fidget to relieve the pain across my back.  I was also making a lot of involuntary noises due to the growing pain the the left side of my mouth where the rubber and clamp where stretching the corner of my lip.  The shaping of the canals was now starting to hurt as well because the novocaine was wearing off.  I was checking my watch constantly as my discomfort and despair grew.  I had planned on trying to go work on the Poezenboot today or maybe ride the bike to the city centre to enjoy the weather, but here it was, nearly noon and I was still in the chair with the girl jamming metal screw looking things into my tooth over and over again with no end in sight.  At one point she said that all of the canals had been shaped and she would fill them next, but then the supervisor came over and made a comment about 21 millimeters instead of 19 millimeters and she went back to filing all of my canals all over again.

Finally, all of the other dental students and faculty began breaking for lunch.   The student began to step it up, trying to fill all the canals as fast as she could.  She got one done, burning the left corner of my mouth through the rubber with the heated metal hook in the process, before the supervisor approached and they began to talk.  I couldn’t understand all of it but I did get the idea that they weren’t going to finish today and that I’d need another appointment.  So the student rushed to get another temporary filling to cover my two unfinished canals and to do the last x-ray.  Again, my mouth is too small so the first one didn’t work and we had to take another one.  She told me that she had filled one of the three roots in my tooth but the other two were “too difficult and had to be opened further” and that it had already been a long time, so they’d make me another appointment and send it to me in the mail.

I got out of the chair at 12:15.  I’d been there for 4 hours and still had to go back for more.  Honestly, I think I was in a slight bit of shock (I don’t do trauma well when it is happening to my face; situational trauma I handle fine but stuff like this sends me reeling) as I wandered back to the bus.  I barely remembered to get off at my stops and I was so relieved to see that CB had decided to work at home this afternoon.  He came down to see how things went.  I told him, he looked at the chafing in the corner of my mouth and the mark on my cheek from the clamp and called the UZ to complain.  He also got me another appointment in two weeks with an actual doctor.  I was in tears and my head was killing me so I laid down and fell asleep for a couple hours before CB woke me up and asked me to go grocery shopping real quick while he made us some fantastic paella.

Now I’m eating some light coffee ice cream and getting ready to watch a movie before bed.

I think the ice cream may very well be the best part of the day.