How to Get Instant Attention at your Dentist's Office...

...tell him the two teeth he performed root canals on are still hurting, and don't ask for narcotics.

I had two root canals performed a little over two months ago and I am still feeling pain in both of them. At times, this pain has been severe, actually worse than it was before the treatments. Now the senior dentist at this practice tells me this does in fact happen to a lot of people and it can sometimes take up to 6 months for the pain to go away, and that 5 percent of root canals fail, but if mine was destined to fail that would have been clear within the first few weeks as the pain would have been unbearable. Hmmm.

Meanwhile, his partner who performed the root canals is expressing doubts and is concerned about the fact they are still not healed, and wants to send me to an endodontist if I am still not better in a few weeks, though his partner thought that was unnecessary when I requested a referral. Don't you just love inconsistency?

But what's really amazing about all this is that every time I have come back to the office because of the pain or to get the temporary fillings redone they have seen me immediately. I mean, I am barely in the door before they are whisking me into the chair to wait for the dentist, who always seems to be ready to work on me within minutes. I really don't know what to make of this as I have never gotten the VIP treatment from a medical professional before, and I am cynical enough to believe it may be a sign they screwed up and are trying real hard to be nice to me, or they just don't want me spending too much time in the waiting room and badmouthing the work they did.

Or maybe they're just decent professionals who feel really bad that I haven't made adequate progress and have had to travel 1.5 hours down there several times already and they want to make it as easy as possible on me as they know I'm in pain.

Yeah, maybe I am a cynical bastard.