I had two fillings on my upper left yesterday. I think maybe the dentist used a bit too much novocaine. He reloaded the cartridge maybe twice (so perhaps 3-4 novocaine cartidges total) to numb up the one quadrant. My appointment was at 9 am. I was still totally numb well into the afternoon. I was finally back to normal around 5 or 5:30. Not only was I numb, but the novocaine infiltrated to the motor nerves and the entire side of my face was paralyzed. When I tried to smile, that side of my mouth wouldn't move. Needless to say, work yesterday afternoon was interesting!
So I'm wondering if the amount of novocaine used is correlated to the amount of time it takes for it to wear off. I've never had a problem with muscle paralysis before, and usually the novocaine wears off in a few hours, not 8! Did he put it in the wrong place, or did he just use too much? I'm going in for the other side next week, so I want to know if I should tell him to ease up a little.
Of course, the nice thing is that I felt absolutely nothing while he was working on me.
