all that's left is the crown: Monday's dentist session

Yesterday, I went to Gangnam Severance Hospital for Part Two of my root-canal treatment. As before, there was a lot of digging and grinding, but no real pain except for maybe a twinge at the beginning when the anesthetic was applied. I was allowed to take pics of the results of the two X-ray sessions I had yesterday; you can see them below. After the secondary Roto-Rootering of the teeth, and before the filling was applied:

See the channels going into the root canals where my nerves used to be?

And this is what things looked like after the filling:

Plugged. Here's hoping there are no more problems.

All in all, it was a painless procedure, and the professor said the next step, going back to my local clinic and getting the crown, wasn't urgent. I simply needed to avoid chewing food too much on the right side. Thus far, there's been no real post-appointment aches and pains, but maybe that's partly because I'm trying to be careful.

I made a weird discovery, though: the last time I'd come, the machine had printed out documents that weren't for me: I'd simply and blindly taken whatever was printed out on the assumption the sheets had been meant for me. Not so, as I discovered: both sheets had unrecognizable names on them (different names, too, for two different patients!) as well as unrecognizable patient numbers. I handed the sheets over to the front-desk girl (again, not the surly one from my very first session); she gamely put them aside in a lost-and-found kind of way. I used the machine again to pay my bill, and this time, I watched everything carefully to make sure it was my own name and number being processed and printed out. Everything seemed okay this time.

Next step before leaving: hit a restroom. I found one, went into the stall, and saw this sign, which I've never seen in a toilet stall before:

As a former infection-control worker, I'm actually happy to see the warning, which basically says, in the middle, to close the toilet when flushing. In infection control, one of the things you learn about (aside from the constant mantra to wash your hands) is how toilets, when they flush, tend to aerosolize their contents. Shit and piss are literally being sprayed out of the bowl and all around. I personally am not very conscientious about closing the toilet bowl, but if I'm shitting and sitting down, I'll often flush after wiping while I'm still seated. I do need to be better about closing the bowl in other situations.

So the doc, in saying goodbye (she again spoke English the whole time), gave what seemed almost like a big, sentimental speech about how I should come back if I ever have any other trouble. She wished me a good walk (despite not having decided on whether to go on this walk, I had told her I was walking the Nakdong River trail as a way to prompt her to get the root canal done more quickly), and that was that. I hit the machine, paid the rest of my bill (when all was said and done, it was indeed about W400,000 total over three sessions: intro, Root Canal 1 Part 1, Root Canal Part 2), went to the bathroom, saw the above toilet sign, then cabbed to work. All that's left to do is the crown, and I can apparently do that much later.