Crowning

Well, one of the most stressful thing in life for me is to visit the dentist. But instead of suffering any worse consequences, I decided to pluck up some courage to do my half-yearly check, albeit after much procrastination.

So I braved the thunderstorm and went for my check up last Sat. I would have chickened out but I have already postponed the appointment 3 times. It makes me nervous just thinking about the visit.

Within minutes of sitting on the dental chair, Dr Lim quickly determined that I have a hairline crack across my two left upper molars. According to her, there are 2 reasons for the hairline crack. Firstly, I already have a big filling in those teeth. And secondly, there's not enough calcium going to the teeth. It's normal that ladies loose more calcium as we age.

Dr Lim advised that it may crack someday and I would have to pull them out! So the proposed solution is to do a crown which will cost me S$700 and 2 more visits. I conceded as I had a horrible experience pulling out a upper right premolar that cost me lots of money, pain, tears and blood!

I had to make sure that I time the visits well as I will be travelling end of the month, and the treatment needs to be completed before the travel. So I visited her today, and the first thing she had to do was the long needle injection to numb the gums. I was begging her not to give the injection, but she said "Don't worry, I will help you along". I think those words did some comfort, though it may sound like something she would routinely say. She then told me to take a deep breath and gently poked the gums with the needle. The deep breath helped! She did numerouos impressions of my teeth and I could feel substantial amount of bleeding during the drilling to remove the old fillings.

Fortunately it was over in less than half an hour. And I was told that there will be no injection the next time round. Yeah! And coward me survived another round of treatment! Thank God!

Now, I need to deal with the pain when the numbness goes off...