Today I went to the dentist for the first time in a few years (well if you don’t count yesterday’s scheduling mishap). It was my first time at this particular dentist in Newburyport, so I was slightly nervous not knowing what to expect. I met the hygienist and went in to start with some X-Rays. The first couple went well, but then she needed to get for the front of my mouth and my gag reflex kicked in. I ended up trying it a few times and on the third try I threw up a little in my mouth. Awesome start!!! Once that was complete she called in somebody to record the recession of my gums for each tooth. She quickly went through each test yelling out numbers between 2 and 6, the entire time I was trying to figure out what the number represented and figured it out correctly thanks to a poster on the wall. I would say the average was around 3 or 4 which is okay, but not great. At one point she came to a tooth and sighed for a second before scoring the tooth an 8.

After the exam she told me that I would need to return a couple more times to do really intense gum scraping to help remove some of the tartar. However, I couldn’t do that until after my root canal and wisdom teeth are removed. More details on that later.