OK, so we have identified the culprit tooth and the dentist has taken a look under the filling. As I had rather expected, a root canal job is called for. $600 or so. Ouch! But at least the tooth is now treated so that it won’t hurt. Another appointment next week. Here’s hoping this doesn’t end up with a gold tooth job like the last one.

Well, the dentist did say that if we left things a few days then the guilty tooth might announce itself. And lo, so it has done. I went fairly suddenly from having intermittent intense pain throughout one side of my jaw to having classic toothache in one specific place. Oddly my mouth also went from being intensely sensitive to heat to being intensely sensitive to cold at the same time. A very strange thing, the human nervous system.

Of course this doesn’t mean the problem is solved. To start with I have to live with this until Monday morning when I can get the dentist to do something about the offending tooth. In addition I don’t know how serious the problem is. Last time I had a tooth go bad it went from filling replacement to emergency root canal to gold tooth in the space of a week. That gets expensive very fast.

Those of you who follow Kevin’s LiveJournal might have noticed him commenting yesterday that he needed dental work done. When he emailed me about it my reaction was, “that’s funny, I’m having trouble with my teeth today too.”

And I was. This morning they were a lot worse, so I went to have a word with the dentist. It seems fairly certain that I have a dying nerve somewhere in the right side of my jaw. Unfortunately most of the candidate teeth are heavily filled, so the teeth themselves are not sensitive. Somewhere inside all that enamel and filling, a poor little nerve is suffering, but neither I nor my dentist has a clue which tooth it is in. The x-rays were inconclusive. So the only option we have it to let things get worse, because if they do that might help us pinpoint the right tooth to work on. In the meantime, I’ll be taking a lot of painkillers.

Oh, and unlike Kevin I don’t have health insurance. Can’t afford it. Can’t afford treatment either. It’s a good job I’d decided not to go to conventions for a while.