Thoughts from Crow Cottage (My Main Blog.)
crowbelle's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The toothless wonder Toothless wonder... That's me! Yep, I finally did it. It was not fun...no, no, no, nononononono-no! Not fun! I had my #18 tooth pulled...(or was it #14? Can't recall)... it was one of those bottom row, near-the rear, chewing teeth, you know, the double variety. Last December I must have bitten down on something hard, and one-quarter of the tooth broke off. I spit it out, and felt in there with my finger...Yikes! A small hole! Still, I had 3/4ths of the tooth still there... so all was not lost... Yet... I made an appointment at a new dentist. Yes, I am just as afraid of the tooth-doctor as I am of the body-doctor, so I hadn't been in a long-long-long time. My own fault the tooth finally broke, too. I'm sure if I'd been seeing a bloke regularly for my teeth maintenance, he or she would have noted earlier that it had the four corner cracks in it from that old, old, OLD filling that has been in there since probably the 1950's! So within 3 days, I was in a dentist's office and confessing my sins. They were appalled! For shame...no dentist in SO many years... Anyway, he did a cursory mouth exam, dictating his findings to his able assistant, and it seemed that each and every numbered tooth (they start No. 1 with the top back right hand side) had something to talk about. Oh god, I was thinking. And basically, this little problem was the entire reason that I cancelled our trip to England this year. Mr. Tooth-Guy told me it may cost me close to, or more than, $3,000 to get things fixed up! So I cancelled our trip abroad. Paul was not a happy husband. It's been more than 3 years now since we've been there, and we are having serious England withdrawal pains. So I had the exam, and they insisted that, before I get the broken tooth attended to (and I could have predicted this!) they needed to put me into the hands of Dental Hygienist Person for some major cleaning procedures. Tartar... that cement-like stuff that forms out of innocent soft foods that linger too long in the mouth... even more than an hour, she said, and it will begin turning to concrete on the teeth. I went back for my first appointed cleaning. Oh, first they need x-rays, so they took the entire hour! Painful too. Since when did x-rays get to be so painful? I was so glad to be outta there THAT day! Then I got the teeth cleaned, and picked at and prodded, and poked, and bled...etc. I was a wreck by the time they were all done - about 3 appointments later! Let's see, $85 per office vist, $150 for the x-rays, that's about $405 I am into this now, and still the broken tooth is sitting there, with the small hole, waiting for attention. Finally, in March - my last cleaning visit - it was decided my next step was to make an appointment with the Oral Surgeon to pull the tooth out! Saving it was going to require re-mortgaging the house, and we are NOT interested in that anytime soon. Been there, done that, and paid it all off twice! Meanwhile, between my last cleaning visit, and the surgical visit, another one-quarter of the tooth broke off. So I'm down to a half of a tooth left in there. I chew only on my right side now. So last Friday, the 10th of June, was the day I had my tooth pulled. Oh joy! NOW I REMEMBER WHY I STOPPED GOING TO THE DENTIST SO MANY YEARS AGO!!! I had had a wisdom tooth pulled back in 1986, just before I married Paul - so's he wouldn't be getting a lot of medical bills from me, and it was the worst experience ever! It took him all day to pull the damn tooth, and he even had to stop and take a few breaks for himself in the middle of it! It hurt bad for days and days, and turned me right off those barbarians! Well, as much horror as last Friday was for me, I have to admit that it took my lovely female oral surgeon only about 30 minutes from start to finish (including time to make sure the Novocain was working good) to pull out this sucker. My life was flashing before my eyes the whole time. I kissed the dogs and Paul goodbye earlier thinking I'd never return again. It was truly a spiritual experience... only I wish I'd gotten the knock-out meds rather than the Novocain - I do not like participating in my own surgery. Having two people leaning over me with hands in my mouth and what looked like a set of plyers, going in for the kill, was almost too much for my chicken-heart to handle. I made them stop part way thru it cuz I thought I felt pain somewhere in there... "Impossible!" she said! Oh, easy for YOU to say! Finally, after pulling, pushing, prying, and drilling a bit of bone so's it would come out (yes! they drilled my bone next to the tooth!) out the thing came (no, I did not want to see it - blech!) and I couldn't believe it was over! I was so nervous at that point I just sat there paralyzed until they cleaned up all around me, and shook my hand, gave me all the instructions and shoved me out of the room! God! It was done! It's only been 6 months since the day the tooth first broke! My next appointment for a cleaning, etc., is in mid to late July. Now I'm stuck again in the rut of going to the dentist regularly! I still will need mucho work done to my still-in-one-piece teeth but there is NO way I'm having a tooth pulled ever again! It was just way TOO scary! Cheers, Bex-the-chicken-hearted 1:03 pm - 12 June 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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