(I should have written this earlier, but I was on deadline) So my dentist says, as she's preparing to give me a second shot, that she went to a course the other week and heard from the guy who wrote the book (she didn't tell me its title) on dental anesthesia.
He said, she says, that the lower jaw is the most anatomically variable part of the body. As a result, you can hand anybody with basic anatomical training a needle and tell them to numb some other body part, and 99 percent of the time they'll get it in one shot. But In the lower jaw, 85 percent. And after decades of practice and training, still 85 percent. And of course that doesn't mean that you'll hit the right nerve spot five out of six times in any given patient...
She goes on about the variability of the lower jaw: sometimes you can numb up one tooth while the one right next to it is still exquisitely sensitized; every now and then you can even numb just part of a single tooth. (I have to say that at this point of my dental career such news mostly makes me laugh, the way you do at a particularly apt Dilbert.)
Apparently I also have a big head. Which means a big jaw, and a pile of connective tissue and muscles (damn that gum-chewing!) to drive a needle through before rooting around for the right spot. And some point in the procedure, trying to hold my head just so, she places her thumb just behind the joint and squeezes, very nearly dislocating something.
After that, the actual drilling and filling was pretty much a piece of cake. I walked out feeling like I'd been beaten with a rubber hose for an hour, but (I am told) that's it for the lower jaw untill the real work starts.
Posted by wallich at January 24, 2004 11:10 AM