My father pulled out one of his front teeth by himself. He had severly inflamed sinuses, and concluded that his front tooth had broken through into the sinus cavity, thereby causing the inflamation. He went to the local dentist, who did not agree with this theory, and refused to do anything.
So my dear old dad went home, had about 3 beers, and wedged his tooth out using a butter knife. :eek: He claims his sinuses instantly cleared, although it was hard to tell with all the blood. He went back to the dentist, handed over the tooth, and requested it be put on a denture plate for later use.
My family was banned from using the local dentist after that.
Sorry for the double post, but regarding the nitrous:
You’ll feel like you are watching a movie of yourself. You just won’t care what is going on, and you will calmly float by and observe, but not feel a thing. It won’t register to your brain that what is happening is actually happening to you.
Ever fall over and hurt yourself while drunk, and clumsily looked at the wound thinking “Wow, glad that wasn’t me”? It’s like that.
I’ve taken it many, many times at 100%, for several minutes. It feels good, it can render you unconcious, but it’s not a true anesthetic.
Hell, inhaling nothing but balloons for 90 seconds or so, I once saw a two foot tall “fairy”, meaning a little tiny queer guy with his sandals hung over his shoulder, walk through my front wall, singing “doo doo doooooooo dooo dooo doooooooo”, very “gaylike”, then right out through the other wall… and I’ve seen other major visual realistic halucinations on it as well. But I just can’t see it as a true pain killer.
I’ve taken other “hard drugs” like LSD and shrooms, in huge quantities, but never seen anything like that.
If NO[sub]2[/sub] is given right the dentist should give one a trial at different amounts to find the right dose for that person. My dose is 50%. That keeps me awake enough to talk, but not really care.
When my wisdom tooth was extracted the gums weren’t stitched and I had minimal discomfort afterwords (if you want to know more about my wisdom tooth extraction, do a search - I’ve mentioned it before).
However, as it happens, I was chewing on some toffee earlier this week and managed to remove a crown together with most of the tooth it was attached to (I had had a root canal done in that tooth many years ago, and apparently root canals make teeth slowly get more fragile over time). Too much tooth was gone for the tooth to be repairable, so the remnants were extracted, and that was stitched. The dentist had to work so hard on that extraction that she accidentally popped the crown off an adjacent tooth. She glued that crown back on a couple of days later for free (the delay was because she was concerned about excess cement causing problems around the healing tissue).
Why did you need NO2???!!! Both my extractions have hurt MUCH less than a standard filling; NO2 would have been far more of a nuisance than a help since I’d need to recover from it (I went back to work as soon as I got out of the dentist’s chair). I have 10 Tylenol-3’s as a souvenir of my dental work this week - they were prescribed for me so I had the prescription filled, but I certainly didn’t even come close to needing them; the strange twinges in my jaw went away nicely with plain Ibuprofen.
Because not everyone is like you. Some people find the novocaine less than 100% effective for numbing their teeth. Why? Because people are different. Some people have more sensitive teeth, longer roots, worse dentists.
Your pain free tooth removal is clearly the exception, not the rule. I’m happy for you but don’t diminish the pain and discomfort others experience just because it’s not your experience.
I’ll never again go to a dentist that doesn’t use gas, because every third or fourth time, with just novocaine, I get the shocking sudden nerve hit described above. I am pleased it has never happened to you, count your blessing.
Sorry - I guess I made it sound too much like people are wimps for needing NO2 for tooth extractions. I didn’t mean it that way. :smack: It’s just that my two tooth extractions have caused me far less grief than the typical filling. I can assure you, I KNOW what you’re talking about with the “sudden nerve hit” - I’ve needed to get peeled off the ceiling a few times in the past during dental work; but that hasn’t happened with my two extractions. Maybe I’ll live to regret my blasé attitude if and when I get another extraction, in which case I promise to come grovelling back and tell all.
Root canals and cavities are two different things. You can’t SEE a root canal problem, but, you surely do feel the pain. I’ve had four root canals over the years, and all four teeth are perfect to look at, but have no ‘root’ because it was removed.
