03/05/2025
Just wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone for their understanding this week. Being poorly at the beginning of the week was followed by a particularly tough dentist appointment this morning which has meant this week has been completely upside down and I haven’t been able to offer my usual service to the standard I always aim for, and for that I am terribly sorry. I know these things happen, but I take my work incredibly seriously and the animals are always my priority, so for my body to not cooperate this week has been really difficult. I am incredibly grateful for all of your understanding and for changing your schedules to accommodate me being unable to work as normal. Hopefully, this tooth will now behave for a while and I can enjoy a normal week and a bit before my annual leave!
For anyone interested in the progress of tooth-gate, I’ll give you the brief (ish!) version of what I’ve been able to understand about it. When trying to finish my root canal on Thursday a tiny part of the dentist’s metal tool snapped off whilst deep inside the root canal. They tried to remove it but it is completely stuck there. Rather than lose the tooth, or remortgage the house and go to a specialist dentist, I decided to let them fill around it, leaving the metal in there and hoping the filling surrounding it would keep infection out. The nerves feel completely dead so it’s not painful, but the anaesthetic, drilling and then initial breaking of the tool was uncomfortable to say the least, and after 3 hours in the chair I had about reached my limit. Now we just wait to see if I remain pain free and the metal doesn’t cause any issues in there. My fingers are tightly crossed; I’m not sure I can bear more poking, prodding and pain in my mouth 😬 I’ve been pain-free since Thursday evening so I’m hopeful! My lip also got accidentally burnt whilst they were heating up the filling (I’m guessing to make it dry faster?) and that was incredibly painful. Think red hot iron being pushed on to your lip 😭 My dentist was fabulous, as always, and really did her best for me. We have both accepted that this tooth is just royal pain and enjoys causing me problems!
I’ve been pretty positive about it up to now, but I think I reached my limit with the pain and discomfort of it all on Thursday, and feel completely exhausted. I do wish more dental help was available on the NHS, along with more painkillers and the choice to go under anaesthetic for certain treatments. I certainly would have chosen to be asleep for this treatment because it’s left me more shaken up and frightened than anything I’ve ever experienced. It also got me wondering about animals and teeth. Animals must suffer the same tooth problems as us? But they can’t tell us they’re in pain or that it hurts when they eat cold food, so do vets just guess by the look of their teeth? Is there such a thing as root canal treatment for dogs? Do we detect dental problems in animals too late because they can’t tell us and we might miss the signs? Are there dentists for animals? Because our GPs refuse to have anything to do with teeth, so do vets like to refer on for teeth too? All fascinating questions, and ones I may well spend the bank holiday weekend researching!
