O.K., I admit it, I was pretty depressed last week. Well, maybe not depressed exactly, but certainly unhappy. I didn’t want to consider what might be coming next, and thought that maybe if I avoided thinking about it, it wouldn’t happen. But avoidance, as I’ve discovered before, doesn’t usually work, and it didn’t work in this instance either. Avoiding the obvious doesn’t fix anything, and the obvious is still this: I still have a tooth that hurts. So what do I do about it?
After another email to Dr. Lane, I braced for the answer I’d wanted to avoid. Yes, tooth number 5 will have to be pulled too, and there’s no getting around it. After explaining what had probably happened (both tooth 4 and 5 had deep fillings that had injured their nerves) Dr. Lane said that she’d still been concerned about tooth 5 and worried that this would happen. If I had known that earlier I would have chosen to have them both pulled at the same time, so I wouldn’t have had to mentally gear up for this process twice, but that’s not an option. What’s done is done, and I can’t go back and change it. Hindsight is always so much clearer, though it won’t change anything now. And now is what I have to deal with.
So, with the good doctor’s advice to wait a few more days before making a final decision, I’m going back into another holding pattern. Then, Monday morning, if nothing has changed I’ll make another appointment with Dr. Stewart (I’m dreading seeing his expression!) to have tooth 5 pulled. There’s no part of this situation I’m looking forward to, but it is what it is.
And the only question left then will be: Will losing one more tooth finally make a difference?