Nope, Still Terrifying

My wife has had some persistent issues with gum infections ever since having an extremely severe jaw injury. It was probably about as bad as a jaw could be injured. Despite this, she had relatively minor scarring, and many people do not immediately realize that she has major injuries just when looking at her.

The two of us go to the dentist together, each with our own appointments. I just have a basic cleaning, but my wife will be having a root canal done. The dentist, who we have been going to for years now, has a new assistant. She finishes with me fairly quickly, just in time to witness the dentist go straight from talking to drilling into my wife’s tooth, without the use of any anesthetic whatsoever.

She is immediately horrified. I think the dentist decides to mess with her a bit, as he just tells her:

Dentist: “[Wife] is pretty tough. She can handle it.”

My wife responded with a thumbs-up.

The dentist initially just went back to work, but relented after a few seconds and let the assistant know that my wife actually had no use for local anesthetic for this because she’s actually already completely numb. The root canal was in her lower jaw. The jaw has a nerve running through the bone on each side, and her injury had completely destroyed these nerves, leaving a complete lack of any sensation from her lower jaw including gums, lower lip, and part of her cheeks and chin.