Question: What's worse than having a redo root canal?
Answer: After having said redo root canal, having the endodontist tell you, "Okay, now I know why your last dentist left that nerve untouched...no dental instrument is designed to penetrate a root as curved as yours."
Then he goes on to say, "Unfortunately, because of that, I couldn't reach the nerve in that root, nor the infection so we're going to have to go to Plan B."
So essentially, what he just said is "Yes, we drilled through your shiny, 3 month old crown, attempted a root canal (for about an hour), but your fucked-up, curvy root is unpenetrable by any known dental tool."
Plan B entails cutting a 1 inch incision into my gum (above the dreadful tooth), peeling my gum back like a flap (lovely image there), cutting out the stubborn little nerve and enormous infection, doing a bone graft (a fucking bone graft, people!) on my jaw bone, then stitching me back up and sending me home. Where I then get to make an appointment to see my regular dentist so that he can repair my shiny, drilled through, 3 month old crown.
Wanna see a picture? No? Tough. You're going to anyway, so that you can see the torture that I will endure tomorrow morning:
Seriously, guys, what did I do in a past life to deserve this? Poor, little dentophobic me!! Oh, and did I mention that they don't put you under for this? It's all done with Novocaine!!
P.S. Thanks to the failed root canal yesterday, I'm sporting the chipmunk look on the right side of my face. And also? The pain, people, the pain!! I can't take prescription pain meds because they make me sick to my stomach, so this is all being dulled by ibuprofen. That's it!!
P.P.S. When I called my mother to tell her the news, she said, "Oh, that's what they said about my root when I had a root canal!" Thanks, Mom, for your fabulous tooth genetics.
