Girl who cried root canal

Twice now I've twittered, blogged, and otherwise announced to the tubes that I was headed for a root canal. Both times the appointment was instead dedicated to root canal preparatory work. But this morning at 9am, I was finally rooted.

How was it? Well, here's the thing. I think it would have been fine if it hadn't lasted so long that my anesthesia wore off. I am not joking. The work took three hours and seven minutes to complete. Aside from being painful, the process was extremely boring (I actually FELL ASLEEP at one point despite having metal filings shoved down my tooth-holes).

Because at some point some of you are probably going to have to have a root canal of your very own, I will explain what it entails:

1. Drugs! I didn't get any gas-type drugs, just the numbing drool-inducing type.
2. Your tooth gets clamped. This mostly feels like having braces.
3. Then, they put a cute little blue cape around your tooth that makes it look like a super-tooth. They claim that this is to isolate it from your bacteria-filled saliva, but it might just be to boost your tooth's self-confidence, cause it's about to get
4. DRILLED! Oh yeah. This is the tooth access hole, so it's a big one.
5. Next they have to locate your canals. Back teeth have up to four canals (I of course had four because my teeth do everything TO THE MAX). As far as I can tell, the scientific procedure for finding the canals is to poke at your teeth until you go "OWWMMPPHHH!". Because dentists are dedicated practitioners of the scientific method, they do this several times to confirm that it is indeed a canal-hole (see, canal-holes hurt when you poke 'em, even when you've been numbed up).
6. Next came my favorite part: they shot anesthetic INTO the canal-holes. How very efficient.
7. Once you're totally numbed, things get sort of gross. They stick little metal files into your canal-holes and twist them and twist them, basically enlarging the existing tunnels. The files get progressively bigger and longer, and I'm not sure what was happening at this point because my eyes were squinched shut and I was thinking determinedly about Chuck's dolphin sweater from Gossip Girl, but whatever was going on required a great deal of arm strength from my dentist.
8. What's this? Standing up? Are we done? OH HELL NO. It's time to walk through the hall while still wearing your supertooth cape because you need X-rays! They X-ray you with the metal files still in your teeth, I believe so they can make sure that they've poked them all the way down to the end. For Emilys only, this step also involves dentists walking in to marvel at your small mouth and take turns trying and failing to stuff normal-sized x-ray equipment into it.
9. Repeat steps 7 and 8.
10. Notice anesthesia wearing off.
11. Repeat steps 7 and 8 except with MORE PAIN.
12. You're done! Well, except for the fact that you have to come in next week, too. Oh, and also you're out $500. Happy rooting!