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Viliam comments on Stupid Questions November 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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If I value my health a fair bit more than most and am a transhumanist, when should I bother to get second opinions before having dental work done?
I had 16 fillings done a month ago and my teeth mostly all still hurt, so I'm going to go back to the dentist and see what he says as soon as I can, but I'm not sure what he'll want to do to me, if anything. (I think fillings are supposed to stop hurting after a week or two). I like him, and I want to trust him, and finding a new dentist would be annoying, but it's so weird and scary that I just had that many fillings done, because... I've always gone to the dentist every 6 months for a cleaning, and I never had to get a filling before, even though I always got routine x-rays to check for cavities every year. I'm only 22. I think that the reason I had to have that many fillings done was because I'd been downing tons of cough drops which contained sucrose for several months, for the reason that my acid reflux had been upsetting my throat.
I guess that I'm really just reminded of my frailty by this experience, and of how easy it is for someone to get old or sick, or even die. Sorry I'm such a bucking mess right now (mentally and physically), and thanks for any suggestions.
I had more than my fair share of tooth fillings, and they usually hurt for a day or two. Later only if I expose them to heat or cold, such as drinking hot tea, biting an ice cream, or inhaling cold air with my mouth. (Also if I touch the filling with an aluminum fork.)
What you describe feels wrong. The sucrose doesn't seem like a good explanation for the remaining pain-- cavities take time, new ones don't appear overnight. ChristianKl asked about X-rays because of two other options: either the dentist didn't clean the tooth correctly and there is still something under the filling, or maybe your tooth has two cavities: one visible which was fixed, and one invisible (under the gum) which wasn't. But this seems unlikely to happen under 16 teeth at the same time.
On the other hand, a tooth pain is sometimes hard to localize. I had an experience that my tooth hurt, and it felt like the whole jaw hurts; yet when one tooth was fixed, the pain was gone. (Not sure why: maybe the source of pain was too close to a common nerve for all teeth?) So, maybe you have a problem with one tooth, and it feels like all of them hurt.
This is helpful, if scary. Thanks. It does seem unlikely that all 16 teeth would still be screwed up--pain localization failures seem more likely, but Im just going off of my intuition. I'm going back to the same guy who did all of my fillings ASAP to get things checked out again. (I wonder, if some number of my teeth weren't cleaned correctly, does that mean it's ok for me to keep seeing that dentist?)