What an ordeal! I was at the dentist's office from 10 am 'till quarter to two and, lemme tell ya, it was no picnic. I underwent the "Zoom" procedure first--a teeth-whitening thing--and that took an excruciating hour and a half. It entailed a device that stretches your lips and holds your mouth open, which is also packed with six tons of gauze. (That's because if the stuff painted on your teeth touches your gums, it burns.) A special concentrated light is then shone on the teeth for fifteen minutes. This ritual is repeated THREE times, all the while you're immobile flat on your back. How did I remain sane? By reciting poetry to myself--prominently William Butler Yeats and Emily Dickinson.
The second procedure was a continuation of "debridement," which simply means getting the tartar off. Meg, the hygienist who does this, is an older woman, very pleasant and talkative. She explained that at my last visit, she had done the easier, bigger stuff--this was "fine tuning." Believe me, when you're in her chair, it doesn't seem the least bit "fine" in either sense of the word. It seems more like having a jack hammer and pick axe working away in your mouth. This took another hour and ten or so, but at least I had the nitrous oxide to make me "floaty" (or maybe I was more like "loopy"). I also had enough Novocaine to numb me up to the eyebrows--welcome when I was undergoing the procedure, but uncomfortable for the rest of the day.
Both procedures revealed some less-than-pleasant surprises: The whitening because I now have to carry out a tiresome procedure that entails putting a plastic form on my teeth, after I fill the depression with a gel I was given. Have to keep this on--or in--for an hour a day. What's more, Zoom causes sensitivity in some teeth and I had it in spades yesterday. (Luckily, it seems to have stopped today.)
Besides all that, "fine tuning" the debridement showed that I have no fewer than FIVE cavities that had been hidden by the cement-like stuff on the teeth. Next visit, I'll have those filled and also, I think, get the root canal. What fun--can't wait!