My Tug Id Nub

I had two more dentist appointments last week, on Thursday and Friday.

Thursday morning, I had one cavity filled, two old fillings replaced and some extensive cleaning done on the upper right quadrant of my mouth.

When I left his office, I was numb from my top jaw to my eyeball, and seriously droopy on that side.

I had a parent conference scheduled for 1 pm, but the dentist told me that, "Oh, you'll be fine by then!"

Well, not so much, but the parents were very understanding, when I explained why I was slurring my words and drooling on their paperwork.

On Friday, we replaced three old fillings (I think) and did a cleaning on the lower right quadrant. This appointment was in the afternoon, which seemed like a much better arrangement.

I had several errands to run afterward, and by the time I was home, the numbness had worn off.

Except for my tongue. The right side of my tongue, especially in the back, is still numb.

Not that completely numb, feels three sizes too big, don't know if you bite it kind of numb, but tingly and "tight" and just not quite right.

You know how when you burn your tongue, and the next day it doesn't really hurt anymore, but it still doesn't work quite right? Like that.

The dentist referred to it as "altered sensation."

Yeah, that's it!

When he was giving me the novocaine, I felt several "zaps" in my tongue. I flinched, and the dentist asked, "Is your tongue getting zapped, or your lip?" so I figured it wasn't a big deal, but evidently, that's when things went (temporarily) awry.

I called yesterday (three days after the appointment!) to ask whether I ought to be concerned.

He said that it isn't unusual to have some inflammation of the nerve ("You were getting zapped pretty good") that can cause prolonged numbness, and sometimes it can take as much as a couple of weeks to resolve itself.

He said that it can actually take even longer, at times, but that he's never actually seen it go beyond two weeks. "Knock wood."

He also said that the resolution can be speeded up with a short course of steriods (Medrol dose pack) but that he wouldn't prescribe that without Dr. E's blessing.

I had planned to ask Nurse D about it when she called about my labwork from that morning (all good), but after reading a bit, I decided that I'd prefer to tough it out with the numb tongue, rather than messing around with steriods right now.

I'm scheduled for another appointment on Thursday, but he said that if I'm still numb then, instead of working on the lower left side, he will probably just do the upper left cleaning that we didn't get to the other day, when I was running so late.

Then, we'll go back and deal with the lower left after the right side of my tongue is back in business, and we can risk losing the left side for a while.

So, in the meantime, I'm waiting for the numbness to wear off, and trying to remember not to experiment with moving my tongue around in different ways, causing me to make really wierd faces.

At least not when there are people around to see me.

Much.