Dental Work Went Pretty Well

I arrived at my dentist's office wet.  Yes, wet.  I took Isaac for a walk before the appointment, because a dog that has had some exercise is a better behaved dog, generally speaking.  After the walk, before going into the office, I offered Isaac some water.  Which he did not want.  And when I went to pour out the water, somehow I spilled most of it on me.  On my jeans and on my shirt.  So I was soggy when I got to the appointment. 

Isaac was good.  He sprawled out on the floor beside the dental chair and took a nap.  At one point he got up, I don't know why, and I had to tell him a couple times to lie back down.  Otherwise, he was fine. 

The dental assistant said she wished all dogs were as good as Isaac.  She didn't mean all service dogs, she just meant dogs in general.  I hear that kind of thing a lot.  Certainly not all dogs would make good service dogs, but probably all dogs could learn to behave well.  But it's not like service dogs are just born that way.  Most people don't want to spend the time and effort to train their dogs really well.

Anyway.  It wasn't painful at all.  The dentist shot me up with a lot of Novocaine.  The tooth that had to be pulled came out really easily.

Here's the weird thing.  The dentist was thinking when he pulled that tooth, we'd figure out what was causing so much trouble with the gum.  He thought he'd find a micro-fracture or maybe a teeny tiny piece of debris in the socket or something.  But there was nothing.  He said if someone just showed him that tooth, he'd ask why they pulled it.  It looked perfect.

He said what it really looked like to him, though he'd never seen or heard of this before, was like my body had just started rejecting the tooth.  He said it looked like the way my body would respond to some sort of foreign object in my mouth.  How weird is that?

But whatever.  I hope the problem is now solved.

They made this temporary appliance for me, like a partial denture, to wear until I get a new bridge.  Well, actually the dentist said if I preferred the partial, I could just use that and not get a new bridge.  The benefit would be that a new bridge would require grinding down a tooth to put a crown on it to anchor the bridge, and sticking with the partial would avoid having to do that to a tooth that is perfectly healthy and good right now. 

But I hate the partial.  I find it very, very uncomfortable.  I put it in this morning to go to the post office and the drug store but took it out as soon as I got home.  It hurts my mouth and feels really strange and I hate it.  Maybe I will get used to it in time and maybe it won't hurt so much when my mouth heals from having the tooth pulled, but it hurts in other places too, not just where the tooth was pulled.

It's sore today but I'm not in too much pain.  My friend John came over yesterday evening and it helped a lot having someone here.  Mostly I think he provided a good distraction from my mouth.  We just talked about stuff and then I was tired so we went to sleep for a while.  It was nice having someone there with me while I slept.  And he took Isaac out to pee so I didn't have to get up and go out in the cold.  Then he had to leave to go to work, but I was OK by myself for the rest of the night.