Dental update

A while ago, I posted about my intentions to take better care of my teeth. A week after that, I went to the dental hygienist for the first part of removing the tartar from my teeth. It was an awesome experience.

Well, no, not really. Of course, it wasn’t fun, what did you expect? But I survived.

I was called inside by the not-so-empathic dental hygienist and she asked me if I was feeling okay about the treatment. I decided to be honest and tell her that I was quite nervous. She asked me why, and I told her that I was not certain what it would be like and if it would be painful or not. And suddenly she started showing some empathy.

She assured me that I could get analgesia at any stage, that I just had to let her know if things were hurting too much, and she would stop immediately. And we got started. That day, she was going to clean my lower teeth. But first, she had to check my gums by pricking in all the sensitive bits. Fun.

Then the instruments came out. First, she removed part of the tartar with an electric tool. She had to get quite close to the gums, sometimes go a bit under them, to remove it all. Ouch. The sound of the tool was quite annoying with a high whine and everything was loud and intrusive. Then she moved on to the manual tools and she started scraping between the teeth. It felt as if she was trying to pull them out sometimes, but she did manage to remove the tartar. It did hurt, but because she was moving from tooth to tooth rather quickly, I could endure it.

Then, in the end, she told me that she would revisit the lower teeth the next time because I was bleeding too much. She couldn’t really see well enough if she got all the tartar. But she got most of it. She polished my teeth and I was allowed to sit up and rinse with water. I was feeling quite light-headed. She started explaining how I should maintain my teeth from now on, with an interdental brush, but I wasn’t really able to pay attention. She noticed that I was not entirely there and became very friendly and gave me plenty of time to recover. She even insisted that I let them know whether I got home safely later.

It took me a few days before I could eat normally again, so it was good that I had made some nice vegetable soup for us. Chewing was painful at first, then uncomfortable, and then back to normal. My teeth were nice and clean!

So the second appointment was not something I was looking forward to, but at least I knew what to expect: something similar to the last time, but with my upper teeth. And it was similar indeed. Rather painful, but endurable. Loud and uncomfortable, but temporary. I managed to get through it without analgesia again. And now I have clean teeth!

I’m supposed to come again in January to see if my teeth and gums are doing well. I really hope that the gums will improve and that the tartar won’t grow back too quickly. Right now it feels good to have this behind me. Next stop: dental surgery to remove my wisdom teeth in December…