It was a routine visit to the dentist. A warning, this tale is not for the squeamish. The largest tooth on the lower jaw in the far back on the right side needed some work. I’m sure the dentist has a proper dentist-like name for this particular tooth, but for you and I such a non-ambiguous term would be meaningless, I’m sure. It was tender and the miniature tooth x-ray revealed the cause and my dentist set about her work to correct the situation, much to my relief. As I said, routine, an 8:00 AM appointment, I was finished and on my way by 9:30 AM with half my face still dead-numb, the admonishment, “If I were you, I wouldn’t eat anything until the numbness wears off, you might chew on your tongue,” still ringing in my ears. Lovely, what a thought, I had replied, “If I were me, I wouldn’t eat anything either.”
It took several hours for the numbness to wear off, a wonderful thing anesthesia. I had the typical post-dentist grinding drilling poking picking injecting suctioning “open wider” soreness, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing a couple of ibuprophen couldn’t handle. Then all of a sudden, zing! “What is that?” Zing! “There it is again. What is it?” Zing zing. “Ow!” “What,” zing, “is that?” zing zing.
I was experiencing sharp jolts of lancinating pain shooting through my newly repaired tooth. It seemed to be caused by the slightest touch of the tongue or the outside cheek against the tooth. I mean the very lightest touch, like barely touching, then, zing, shooting pain.
At first, I thought that maybe it was an effect of the anesthetic and that it was just the nerve of the tooth acting up coming back from being numbed up. Yeah, an uppity nerve, “Hey, I’m baa-aack!” Or maybe the nerve was damaged because the filling was so deep and the dentist had to get so close to it that this time she really did get to the nerve and now I’m going to have, (sudden intake of breath, pause for dramatic effect) the dreaded root-canal, oh my!
At any rate, I was sitting there, trying to get some work done, these zingers zapping around inside my mouth no matter how hard I tried to hold my tongue and lips perfectly still. After a couple of hours I begin to think, “This is ridiculous, I can’t live like this, I’m going to starve to death.” I wasn’t thinking that I might need to be more patient, or that maybe I was being a bit of a drama queen. I was mostly worried that I was a wuss, because at that point, I wanted to call my dentist and tell her what was happening. But I didn’t want her to think I was a wuss. So, I had to carefully consider, “Is this problem now bad enough to be considered outside of the range of wuss material?” I decided it was, I decided I was beyond wuss, so I called.
After talking to two assistants and waiting on hold, they gave me an appointment for that afternoon to come back. Yes! I’m not a wuss! Take two ibuprophen and call me tomorrow, that would have meant I was a wuss, but they told me to come back in today! No, not a wuss, whew. So there I am, driving all the way back, getting zapped and zinged all the way, and getting kind of hungry too, now that you mention it. I showed up for my appointment at 2:50 PM. I am so relieved I don’t have to put up with this any longer.
My dentist goes to work; she is all over this. She is grinding, picking, painting this awful tasting stuff and when she is done, no more zingers! Here’s the deal - galvanic current - what the heck? Little electric shocks stimulating the nerve, caused by the metal in the fillings and the crowns touching each other, gold next to silver. It sometimes happens, but not usually.
I remember something about galvanic current from chemistry. It is the principle behind how batteries work. You put Nickel and Cadmium together and a current flows, you know, NiCad batteries, just one common example. In fact if you put just about any two metals together a current flows, the more different their electric potentials, the more the current. You can tell it is happening because the metal corrodes as a result.
The metals used in dentistry are the least likely to succumb to this effect, however. The gold, silver and mercury used in fillings and crowns are known as noble metals; they are notably resistant to corrosion and this current flow thing. However, sometimes a very low current can occur between silver/mercury amalgams and gold crowns, and a sensitive nerve under the right conditions can sense this extremely small current. I can vouch for that, ouch! The problem can be solved by having only one type of metal in your mouth at one time. I need to replace the silver/mercury amalgams in my mouth with gold crowns so that all I have is gold rather than a mixture of different metals. Cindie goes, “Yeah, right!”
If you have any fillings or crowns, you can try this out and see what it feels like yourself. Just take a piece of aluminum foil and chew on it, hah, right! What happens is the effect of galvanic current. Pretty powerful stuff, zing zing. If you are one of the fortunate ones and have no metal in your mouth, you can chew on aluminum foil all day and it won’t bother you at all.
I can chalk this experience up to “It’s always something…” or to “Every time you think you’ve seen it all…” or to “You can’t make this stuff up…” but one thing I know, life is not boring, at least not from where I sit. I used to think the stories about people that could tune in radio stations with their teeth were urban legends. I might have to rethink that. Who knows, with this galvanic thing? From now on, just call me battery mouth. I’m trying to see if I can tune in an oldies station. I’ll let you know how I make out.
