I spent two and a half hours this morning having a root scaling and planing done, which looks like this:

Scaling
scaling.jpg

Planing
planing.jpg

(photos from this page)

I have early stage periodontal disease. It’s where crap gets lodged under your gumline and eats away at the bone keeping your teeth in place and inflames the gums. Left untreated, teeth will separate from the gums and fall out.

The solution is to shove a hook under your gums and clean out the crap (scaling) and to smooth your teeth so the gums can reaffix themselves (planing). Given time, with proper brushing and flossing and continued check-ups with professionals, the surrounding gums can heal enough to prevent further decay. But the bone is gone forever.

Prior to their gum and nerve spelunking, they gave me about 10 shots of novocaine. I felt like an animal that had escaped from the zoo and was being pelted with tranquilizer darts. The worst are the shots around the upper teeth because there’s little tissue there, even if your gums are totally healthy, and the needle is piercing/scraping a lot of bone.

Many people choose to stretch the procedure over two or more visits because of the unpleasantness, only having half or a quarter of their mouth done in one sitting. I had it all done in one sitting and stuck around for three fillings as well.

I hadn’t been to a dentist in over five years, partly because I didn’t have dental insurance until this year, and partly because I knew something like this procedure would be the result. I’m pretty good about brushing my teeth, but not so good about flossing. I will need to remedy that if I want to avoid going through this again.