Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Mostly All Better

I know why dentists are so cautious of pregnant women. In a word: LIABILITY. Plus probably their training regarding pregnant women, which according to my dentist is to never do anything unless you really have to.

Liability has, of course, a few sides: a genuine caution about the issue at hand, a distressingly well-founded fear of litigation, and the paranoid fear most pregnant women - egged on by society, stupid books, ill-informed medical professionals, and a truly useless drug rating system - have of, well, everything. Another pregnant mom asked me today, in tones of incredulity, if it was safe to have a root canal while pregnant. I was tempted to say, "No! It might kill my baby! But I did it anyways!" (In fact, novocaine is considered very safe, and so are most opiates, in moderation- five days of vic0din isn't going to do anything terrible to my preshus.)

All the same, the midwife was right: Get over it. I had to bully the dentist into filling a small cavity on the other side- next week- because... surely it could wait another six months. Or! They could do this totally safe procedure NOW!

In any event, I feel that the root canal was much like childbirth: by the time you get around to it, you're so uncomfortable that everything after is an improvement.

2 comments:

  1. Do you ever just want to say to people who question what you decide to do as a pregnant woman, "I'm not an idiot, you know. I do have a PhD and I didn't get it by sleeping with my committee." I can't wait until I am more visibly pregnant and people start giving me the evil eye whenever I have a glass of ice tea.

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  2. @Elisabeth: No. Usually I want to say something MUCH ruder. :) And hey! Just wait until you're drinking, say, 3 oz of beer! (Actually nobody here even gave me the evil eye. It's the land of Beer, after all.)

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