Beautiful Canals

So on Friday I had a root canal. My second one in four months. I'm quite the little dental chair trooper lately.

I know that the word dentist instills fear in the hearts of so many people. But I'm here to tell you that despite having visited with my dentist so often these past few months, I've actually found it an enjoyable experience. For one, Doctor Ivankovic is a phenomenal doctor, Debbie is a wonderful dental hygienist, and the entire staff are wonderful people, always a pleasure to interact with. What more can one ask for (besides no cavities)?

My visits to Dr. Ivankovic are usually filled with mirth and laughter (perhaps it's me overcompensating for my fear) -- but this last visit was pretty interesting because she commented several times on how I had beautiful canals.

I knew I was meant to be something one day. I just never thought I'd be the poster child for perfect tooth canals. Too bad I screwed so many of them up having had to have the root canal treatment in the first place.

Dr Ivankovic emailed me the "before" during and "after" pictures of my tooth. Basically a root canal is this: Drill a hole in the tooth, remove the decayed or dying pulp from within the roots. Disinfect, replace the pulp with an artificial filling, seal off the tooth, and you're done. I've posted the "after" picture from the procedure. As you can see, the tooth second from the right has had the natural pulp (sounds like a Tarrantino movie doesn't it?) removed and replaced with "filling" -- pretty educational, isn't it?

But the BEST thing about my root canal, the absolute BEST thing was that I think I enjoyed it more than half of the painful and tedious meetings I've had to attend at work this past week. And it was a lot less painful than what I'm working on right now for work (yes, at 3:17 AM - I'm just taking a little breather - mostly for my sanity)