GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #984: NOT AS BAD AS EXPECTED

 Remember a while back when I said I might have to make a choice between having a roof over my head and having two feet? I've been thinking about that a lot because, after the move, as I've been changing my bandages, the wound I can see looks worse. Deeper. It doesn't help that there's a brown felt pad I have to stuff in the wound. When it gets wet, which is supposed to happen, it turns into a brown sludge that is supposed to be good for the wound. Unfortunately it makes the wound look scary as fuck when you take the bandages off.

Two weeks ago my wound care doc wanted me to get an x-ray of my bad foot. I didn't have the time that day, but I got it done last Thursday. Ordinarily when I do this, she comments on the results immediately, which always sets my mind at ease.

This time she didn't (and the raw data suggested that my bones and soft tissue were breaking down even further), and that sent my mind into a death spiral of what-if scenarios. I was able to kill the impulse until this Monday, reasoning that she might not have seen them yet but certainly would by the start of the following week.

Nope. So I've been suffering from the most horrible thoughts since then. As I parked in the Center for Health's lot I hoped that it wouldn't be amputation time. This would be the single worst moment for me to lose my foot, especially since I still don't have a real home and another move is going to happen soon. It will have to. I might have the money for one more month here, but certainly not anything beyond that.

So I entered the lobby with dread. I helpfully reminded myself that one wound had bled the night before, and it never does that. By the time my name was called I was practically in the OR saying goodbye to my foot.

Then, after the bandages were removed and my foot cleaned up, the doc came in and said my x-rays looked good. Cue the sigh of relief. She looked at the wound on the side of my foot, the one I can't see, and said that it actually looks smaller, and it's now difficult to see the bone that used to show through.

Then she looked at the wound on the bottom of my foot and said that it was deeper, and there was a new tunnel going through the middle, and she can see bone through that hole. Fucking FUCK. Every victory seems like a pyrrhic victory. What the fuck?

But I walked out of there with no need for amputation, so I'll take it. For now.

And then I had to go to the dentist to get a cavity filled. So my day off from work was a sheer joy today. Nothing but feared infections and numb mouths and drilled bone. Such is my fuckin' life. I remember when it wasn't like that. Could I please go back to that? Please and thank you?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #115: A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE DENTIST'S

Some of you may recall that I had a bout with gingivitis a few years back, and while I've defeated it, my gums have receded a bit too much. I wound up losing a tooth to it. I got an implant, as described in my old multi-part "Tales of Dentistry." The dentist I'm about to talk about is referred to as Dentist Two in the second part of that series.


I recently went to my dentist for a cleaning, and the hygienist said that my gums on tooth 26 had receded too far, to the point where if I did nothing about it, I would lose that tooth. Dentist one referred me to dentist two again for a skin graft.


I just got back from my Vegas vacation, so I had the day off to recover. Because it sounded urgent, I decided to go in for my gum graft today and get that over with. It went very well. There were no issues. However, after, when I was setting up my appointment to get the stitches taken out, the receptionist suddenly remembered me. Dentist two remembered fairly well, but the receptionist suddenly had total recall.


She asked me if I used to come in with my grandfather. I did. She asked me if I was a writer. I was (and still am, in case all of you have forgotten). She asked me if I liked horror, and I said yes.


Then, she said something very odd to me. She said that she remembered thinking about this nice young man who used to come in with his grandfather, who needed a tooth implant. Immediately, I thought, "Oh shit." Because I was on my best behavior due to the fact I was going to see a dentist whom I didn't know. (I don't act like myself if I'm in such a situation.) Also, my grandfather was with me because I was on trial for DUI at the time. If he didn't drive me, I couldn't make it to the dentist.


But then she said that she wanted to set me up with her daughter, who really likes horror books, whose husband she hated. I wanted to tell her about the way I really am, but I knew it would just be more awkward, so I stayed silent.


And then she asked about how my writing career was going, so I talked vaguely about my first book, STRIP, from MUSA, and my second book, TALES OF QUESTIONABLE TASTE, from StrangeHouse. Also, I told her my third book was coming out soon, although I didn't mention the title. It's pretty vulgar, and it might change by the time it comes out. But still.


The next thing I know, she's telling everyone else in the office that I'm a writer of horror and crime. All of a sudden, everyone, including Dentist Two, wants to read my books. They said they were going to look me up on Amazon.


I didn't dare tell them that my second book features a space giant fucking the sun, as provided by the awesome Jesse Wheeler.


Only one of them strikes me as someone who might enjoy my work. The others? Let's just say that my next visit to the office should be . . . interesting.

TALES OF DENTISTRY CHAPTER FIVE

Let me give you an idea of what my dental practices are. In the morning, after eating breakfast, I use a Sonic toothbrush on my teeth, gums, and tongue. This was recommended by Dentist Two to get my gums to spring back from my case of gingivitis. It actually worked, too. My mouth was starting to look much healthier, even if my teeth are a bit on the discolored side. Speaking of which, Dentist Two’s hygienist told me to use Sensodyne Pronamel because the enamel of my teeth has faded considerably. I am apparently at risk of having my teeth chip and crack because of this. So when I use the Sonic toothbrush, I put Pronamel on it. Then, I use a proxy brush (also with Pronamel on it) to go between my teeth, rather than floss. Lastly, I use the mini brush and the special mouthwash I was given a couple of chapters ago to keep the cap on my implant clean. And then, just before I go to bed, I do it all over again.



Three months of this, and thousands of dollars. But it will all be worth it.


I went in to Dentist Two to have the abutment put in. It was a very quick procedure. In fact, calling it a procedure seems a bit pretentious. I sat down, and she unscrewed the cap. She then snapped a plastic piece into place, and that was it. My abutment was in.

When I looked in the mirror, what I saw looked like a filed down, miniature tooth with a flat top. Weird, but better than the metal knob. I was then told that I could have the crown put on whenever I wanted. I said I had a cleaning scheduled with Dentist One in about a month, and she said that was fine.

On my way out, I was presented with the bill. “Four-twenty-five,” I was told.


I pulled out a five. That seemed reasonable for a piece of plastic.


“Sorry, hon. I meant four hundred and twenty-five.”


“Oh.” Well, I couldn’t pay that. In fact, all I could offer was the five. I now have yet another bill, this time for $420. Which would be cool, if I smoked weed.


I decided not to wait for the cleaning. I wanted this done as soon as possible. I contacted Dentist One and was told that I could come in for the molding at the end of the week. From there, it would take two weeks to make the crown, and then everything would finally be done.


It’s a good thing I didn’t wait the month, then. I wanted to be done as soon as possible.


I went in for the molding. It sounded simple enough, but it was actually kind of gross. Dentist One popped out the $425 abutment and put this half-tray with goo on it in my mouth.


“This will take five minutes to set,” he said, and he held the tray in place.


I felt the cold goo ooze around my teeth and into the empty spot. At first, it was just uncomfortable, and then I tasted it as it rubbed up against my tongue. Awful. But the worst part was trying to swallow.


I’ve got a bad gag reflex, and it reared its ugly head that day. I started gagging with the thing in my mouth. I tried not to, but my throat just started convulsing. Dentist One tried his best to help, but he couldn’t take the tray out now. We had to stay the course.


“Just lean forward. Don’t swallow. I don’t care if you drool all over the place.”


I took this advice and started breathing heavily through my nose. Saliva ran like a river out of my mouth, down his gloved hand, and down to the bib around my neck. I felt gross and foolish.


But finally, it was over. He yanked the mold out of my mouth and prepared the next one. “Don’t worry, this one sets after only a minute.” It was still bad, but it could have been worse. I didn’t gag on this one, but I was building up to it. If it was in any longer, I probably would have puked all over Dentist One.


After this was done, he held up a bunch of sample crowns against my other teeth, and it took me a moment to realize he was trying to match up the color. As soon as he’d settled on one, he let me out of the chair and said, “We’ll set you up for two weeks, and then this thing will be over.”


We decided that I’d just come in earlier on my cleaning day. We’d put the crown in, and then we’d get my teeth cleaned. And that would be all she wrote.


Between that day and the day of the crown, I received notification from my insurance. This crown alone was going to cost me $1,600. I didn’t think it would be that much. Fuck. And I didn’t expect the insurance to cover any of it, but still.


Let this be a lesson, kids: don’t lose your teeth.


I noticed a paragraph on the letter, though, that gave me some hope. Dentist One’s office didn’t submit all the paperwork. It was possible that some of this would be soaked up by the insurance, if everything was filed properly.


When I went in to get the crown placed in, I mentioned this to the assistant. She said that she’d noticed the discrepancy, and that everything had been sent in per the insurance company’s instructions. Guess what: it’s possible that they’ll pay a good percentage of this. At the time of this writing, I don’t know if this is true. Maybe I’ll write an epilogue some day and let you know.


They led me back to the dentist’s chair, and I was given a cursory examination. When Dentist One determined that everything was good, he showed me the crown, which he’d filled with some kind of liquid. Concrete, I think. He then slid it into place and gave me a cotton ball to bite on.


“There’s a clock up there,” he said, pointing. “Bite down as hard as you can for an entire minute. Then, bite firmly for another minute.”


How, exactly, does one quantify the difference between biting firmly and biting as hard as one can? Just to be sure, I pushed my jaw up against the rest of my head as hard as possible for an entire minute. Only then did I rely on my ordinary biting strength.


Soon, it was all over. The cotton ball was removed, and I was escorted over to the opposite side of the building for my cleaning. It wasn’t until I got back out to my car that I got a look at my new tooth.


It’s passable. If no one is trying to find it, it will look just like any other tooth. However, if given more than a cursory examination, it’s pretty obvious. There is a short distance between it and my gum-line, which doesn’t compare with the rest of my teeth at all. There is a plastic quality to it, and the lack of a filling distinguishes it from the rest of my molars. However, the dentist managed to match the color to the rest of my teeth EXACTLY.


Having gone so long without a tooth there, it feels strange in my mouth, especially if I’m chewing. It’s so much smoother than the rest of my teeth, it feels like I have a marble stuck in my mouth when I’m eating.


But I’d much rather have this alien feeling—a feeling that will probably go away with time—in my mouth than to have a space between my teeth, a space where food constantly gets caught.


I can’t even tell you how many thousands of dollars I spent on this implant (because I don’t yet have the final numbers), but it’s worth every penny.


Still and all, take care of your teeth, folks. As Doc Holliday said in WYATT EARP, “They’re the only set you’ll have.”

TALES OF DENTISTRY CHAPTER FOUR

The mouthwash sucked at first. The taste wasn’t as bad as I was told it would be, but when it touched the empty spot where my tooth used to be, the pain nearly floored me. It was intense, no matter how easy I tried to be with it. It was as if someone had jabbed a needle into the empty trench in my mouth.



But after a while, it stopped hurting. The worst part about the long wait was keeping the trench clean after meals. Crumbs and stuff sometimes managed to get in there, and the only way to keep it clean was to use a syringe Dentist Three gave me to blast warm water in there. It worked, but after EVERY meal? That shit just got tedious, especially at work. I’d retire to the bathroom after lunch so I could clean out the cleft in my gums. People would then ask me questions. Even back at my desk, people would see the syringe and ask me all about it. It was a pain, and my junkie jokes got old fast.


But finally, there came the day when I would get my implant. First, I had to get the CT scan, to make sure this thing was going to work out. Best part: I had to pay for the whole thing at that moment. Yeah, about $200 for the scan, in advance. You’re starting to get the idea of how much this is costing me, right?


I sat down, and the scan went around my head, or at least it tried to. My shoulders were too high, and it kept brushing up against them. I tried my best to keep my head straight, but they had to do it again. There was no way to adjust it, either.


When it was done, the technician said, “Do you have a cold?”


“No,” I said.


“You’re going to have one soon.”


Sure enough, the next day I was sniffling.


I should mention that the people who did the scan were not affiliated with any of the dentists I’d seen by that point. However, they were in the same building as Dentist Two, who is the person who needs to see the scan results. I scheduled this thing a couple of weeks in advance of the implant appointment, to make sure there was plenty of time.


Just to make sure everything was going to go smoothly, one week before the appointment, I called Dentist Two to make sure they had the results. Guess what: they didn’t, and when they called the scan company about the issue, they claimed to have sent it off. Yeah, it got lost in the mail.


The mail. They are not only in the same FUCKING building, the scan company is on the floor below Dentist Two, almost directly below. All it would have taken was for someone to walk it up.


Well, things worked out anyway. Dentist Two got the scan just in time, and she said she thought everything was going to go well. It was time to get ready and get shot up with Novocain.


This time, when they put the blood pressure cuff on me, I scored well below the threshold. They congratulated me on this, and they decided that before, I was just too stressed out by having a tooth pulled. There was no real problem here.


They injected me and went to work drilling me. I tried to watch TV, but having so many tools shoved in my mouth was kind of distracting. In the background, some radio station played Mellencamp’s “Hurts So Good.” How fitting.


At one point, Dentist Two had to fit an extremely long, thick drill into my mouth, so I had to open up as widely as I could. There was barely enough room to fit it in. If not for the missing tooth, it wouldn’t have made it.


Now, they numbed me as much as they could, and for the most part, the procedure was painless. However, keep in mind that they were drilling all the way down into my jawbone. Yep, I felt it a bit. Every once in a while, they had to reload me on the Novocain, but it never reached down far enough to be completely painless.


Finally, it was time to put the implant in. Actually, it looked kind of like a wood screw. They experimented with different sizes until they realized that it would go in a little bit low on me (because of the crown lengthening). But then, after looking at my x-rays again, they saw that I bite with my back teeth (so much so that my front teeth don’t come together), so this tooth was not going to come into consideration when it came to chewing.


Now that this was determined, they started screwing the implant into me. I felt it getting tighter and tighter until I heard a click in my head.


“Wow, did you hear that?” Dentist Two asked. I couldn’t speak because I had a giant screwdriver in my mouth, so she continued: “That’s good news. Honestly, I didn’t know for sure if this implant was going to take hold. You lost a lot of bone, so much that I wondered if you actually got the bone graft. But that click means that this is going to stay in place. This is going to work.”


Well, that was good news . . . wait a minute! This she wasn’t certain?!


I let it go. Things were going to work out, so why quibble?


She snapped a cap over the implant and told me to use some of the mouthwash stuff she’d prescribed for me before to keep the cap clean. She also gave me a miniature brush to use to this end. If I didn’t use this, then it would get discolored and nasty and food might slip in under it.


When I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw what looked like a metal knob in my mouth where the tooth had once been. It looked tiny, and I wondered how they’d get a crown on that thing.


She told me to come back in three months, at which point she’d put the abutment on. Then, I’d be free to get my crown. At long last.


I was presented with my bill and sent on my way.


Tune in next time for the stunning conclusion. And remember to brush twice a day, floss, and all that jazz. You don’t want this to happen to you.

TALES OF DENTISTRY CHAPTER THREE

Why wouldn’t I be nervous? I was going to have a tooth pulled, and if that’s not enough to make one jittery, I don’t know what is. I settled into Dentist Two’s chair as best I could, and I tried to be calm. I could feel my heart jack-hammering away, and I knew I was good at hiding it whenever I was nervous, but there was no hiding from the blood pressure cuff.



She slid it on and checked the results. Naturally, they were off the chart. She asked if I was on medication to ease this, and I said I wasn’t. My problem was, I don’t know, I WAS GETTING A TOOTH PULLED! She explained the process in an attempt to get me to relax. She said they weren’t just going to yank it out, but they were going to wiggle it back and forth until it was nice and loose. Then, they’d pull it.


This did not ease my mind. Nor did it ease my heart. While my blood pressure came down considerably, it was still not in the range she felt comfortable with.


We tried a few more times before she finally said, “Would you prefer it if you were unconscious when getting this tooth pulled?”


Unconscious? You bet! I nodded. “That would definitely help.”


“Well, we don’t do that here, but I know of another dentist who would be able to help you out with this. He would also take care of the other implant preparations. Would that be better for you?”


I would have preferred to do it that day, since I was running out of time off from work. But there was no way I’d be able to take a tooth-pulling while I was awake. She recommended another dentist, and I thought that was that.


Whoops! Actually, that wasn’t it. This guy who could have been Dentist Three was located too far north, and I wasn’t driving at the time due to a few legal issues. I needed someone closer to Elmhurst.


Lo! and behold! Dentist Three was found five minutes away from home. They said they could fit me in for a consultation, and best of all, my grandfather was familiar with them.


If you’ve been following my non-fiction work for a while, you know that my grandfather knows EVERYONE in Elmhurst. There is no escape from his acquaintance. As it turned out, this other dentist had done some work on my grandfather, specifically the pulling of several teeth. In fact, he’d known this guy for so many years that we eventually got a 10% discount from the guy.


But as it turns out, Dentist Three is actually that guy’s son. Dentist Three is a young guy, and he apparently remembers shopping for a suit when he was a kid . . . at the clothing store my grandfather used to work at.


Dentist Three took a look at my mouth, and then he explained what would happen. As soon as the tooth is pulled, they need to put a bone graft into the remaining socket. If they don’t do this, I will lose bone tissue in my jaw, so much that an implant would be impossible. The bone graft slowly becomes a part of me, and when it’s solid, they can drill an implant into my jaw. This takes about three to four months.


By the way, you may be wondering where one would get a bone graft. As it turns out, it comes from donors. As in, people who are dead. Yep, I was gonna’ get dead fella’ bone in my mouth.


He then told me that before the implant goes in, I’d need a CT scan to make sure that there was enough bone there to do the job. Three months after the implant, I would get an abutment installed, upon which my new crown will go. Good times.


Can you pull the tooth today?


Well, since I was going to get put under, no. I had to fast and everything in preparation for that. After I got the tooth pulled, I’d be given antibiotics, pain killers, and mouthwash.


“Will I be able to drink booze?” I asked.


“What? Of course. I would never recommend the procedure if it meant quitting drinking.”


I think I came to the right place.


“Just don’t drink while on the antibiotics, or they may not work. And if you take the pain-killers, avoid alcohol. That’s bad news. After that, well, don’t drink to your heart’s content, but you know what I mean.”


I found this agreeable.


The next week, I went in, ready to rock and roll. They started prepping me to go under, and they got me ready for the needle. Dentist Three looked at my arm and said, “Jesus, that’s a big vein. If I miss this, I need to go back to medical school.”


It was surprising how fast everything went. I closed my eyes and when I opened them again, it was over. I had this vague memory of coming out of it for a moment, but they turned up the general anesthesia and put me to sleep again. That was it. It felt like five seconds had passed, and the next thing I knew, Dentist Three was telling me to bite down on a bunch of gauze.


I was led to the recovery room, which was really just a closet with a couch in it. I lay down, and after a while, Dentist Three came back with my meds. Antibiotics twice a day, Vicodin as needed. (Sadly, I learned the next day that I am immune to Vicodin.) After a day, I could use the mouthwash stuff every morning and night. There were stitches in my mouth once again, but this time, they were there to hold a plastic platelet thing down over the hole in my gums. This was going to keep the bone graft in until the gums were closed enough to keep it in. Best of all: the stitches would dissolve and fall out on their own. When the platelet comes out, just throw it away. Come back in a few weeks.


Groovy, right? Well, after a few days, the platelet was feeling pretty loose, and I kept feeling like I had grit on my tongue. I started getting the paranoid feeling that the bone graft was splintering and slipping out. I called Dentist Three, but he told me that it sounded like the stitches were coming out, which was natural. A bit early, but natural.


When I went back in to see him, he said, “Wow, that is pretty loose. I’m just going to cut it out of there.” He snipped it away and pulled out the stitches before giving me a quick examination. “It looks good. Just keep up with the treatment, and you should be fine.”  He also gave me a syringe, so I can flush food out of the trench in my gums after every meal.


The bill for his services: more than $1,100, and that’s with the discount. Dentist Two gave me a credit for the crown lengthening, since I wound up losing the tooth, but I still owed her about the same amount for whenever the implant would go in. I was never billed for Dentist One’s root canal, so I can only assume that he wasn’t going to charge me for it. Still, that’s a lot of fuckin’ money, and none of it was going to be covered by my insurance.


Tune in next time for the implant . . . .

TALES OF DENTISTRY CHAPTER TWO

What is a crown lengthening procedure? It’s simple, really. It’s when they remove a swath of gums from under one of your teeth, thereby making the crown look bigger. This is what Dentist Two had in mind for me. The idea was to have the procedure done so Dentist One could see under the gums to see how far down the decay went. He would then make a decision about what we need to do with my bad tooth at that point.
Dentist Two was a chipper woman, whose abundance of energy somehow put me at ease. Not enough at ease that my blood pressure wasn’t rocketing, of course, but still, I was more relaxed than I expected to be.
About the high blood pressure: Dentist Two doesn’t do anything to you if your blood pressure is beyond a certain point. I was right there on the cusp. She kept testing me until I was relaxed to the point where she felt it was safe to give me Novocain.
There was really only one problem with the procedure: when they do this, they only numb your gums. You can still feel your teeth, and the bad one was pretty tender at this point. Every time she brushed up against it, I felt a jolt of pain. Now, speaking as one who had been through an immense amount of pain recently, I was able to take most of it, but there was one point when she actually tapped the tooth with a metal tool, and I jumped up hard enough to almost fall off the chair.
The procedure itself was pretty quick, though, which was merciful. It didn’t even seem all that scary. The worst part was watching her closing me up. The idea of stitches in my mouth absolutely terrified me. I didn’t even need to see the result to be frightened by it. Just seeing her pull the thread back was enough to gross me out.
When she finished, she handed me a mirror, and I saw that my tooth did, indeed, look bigger. There were two black blots in there, which I took to be the stitches. All in all, it didn’t look too bad. I showed it to some friends later, and they were shocked by it. In fact, they were kind of surprised that I could be up and about, knowing that there were stitches in my gums.
She gave me post-op instructions (including do not sip through a straw or spit for a day, and rinse my mouth out with saltwater a few times) and told me to come back in a week to have the stitches out. After that, I can go back to Dentist One for an examination. And if I experienced any pain, I should take a couple of Advil. Well, that sounded kind of small for oral pain, but as it turned out, it wasn’t so bad. I hardly felt a thing. Every once in a while, while eating, I felt something tug at the stitches, and that wasn’t comfortable. But that was the worst of it. Oh yeah, and I couldn’t eat anything sharp, like potato chips. That was actually the worst part, as I’m a huge fan of chips.
Anyway, I followed instructions, and when I got the stitches snipped and pulled out, Dentist Two said everything was looking very good. Cool.
I went back to Dentist One, and after poking around a bit, he said that he thought he could clear this up with a root canal. This wasn’t a promise. He said that things could still fall apart, but he thought it was worth a shot, that a root canal could possibly fix this.
Root canals are done in two parts. The first is to cut the top off your tooth and then to go in and file all the decay out, all the way down to the roots of your teeth. The second part is to close everything up with a crown after a few finishing touches. The tooth would then be a dead tooth, but it would still be in your mouth, right?
Okay, so I went in for part one, after having heard horror stories all my life about root canals. In actuality, it’s not all that bad. There is ZERO pain when they’re doing it. There is some discomfort because you have to keep your mouth open for a long time, but that’s the worst of it. The dentist then puts a bunch of files that look like needles into your tooth. It looks scary, I’ll tell you that, but again, there is ZERO pain. I was so loaded up on Novocain, you probably could have hit me in the mouth with a hammer, and I wouldn’t have felt it.
Then, there is the filler. If you hollow out your roots, you need something to fill the spot, right? He stuffed four rods into the tooth, which he then had to seal by setting them on fire. The assistant produced a lighter, which the dentist used to heat up a metal tool. As soon as it was hot enough, he pressed it into each root. The sizzle and the smell of burning tooth was kind of off-putting, but again, there is ZERO pain.
He then cooked up a temporary crown, which he glued in place. He told me to come back next week, and we’d finish up. He said everything looked very good, that he thought this was really going to work.
I went on my way. He told me if there was any pain, I should take a couple of Advil. This time, though, I did feel pain afterwards. Actually, a lot of it. That’s when it all catches up to you, after the procedure is done, not during. I got a jumbo bottle of Advil and slogged through the week.
There was one problem: half of my tongue remained numb when the rest of that side of my mouth came back to me. I couldn’t taste anything on that side for that entire week. Why? I’ll explain in a moment.
I went back, expecting everything to go smoothly. In fact, Dentist One said that since it was now a dead tooth, I wouldn’t need Novocain. But I was paranoid, so I asked him to shoot me up, anyway, which he gladly did.
At this point, I mentioned my half-numb tongue, and he said that it’s actually a common thing. When injecting Novocain, you’re supposed to just touch the nerve with the needle, but occasionally, the drug gets INTO the nerve. When this happens, numbness can continue indefinitely. Now THAT is scary. I asked how long this would last, and he said sometimes it takes a few weeks, sometimes a few months. There are some cases in which the tongue remains numb forever.
I tried to keep that out of my mind as he started poking around in my mouth. He took the temporary crown off and probed into the tooth. As he was doing this, he cursed.
“What’s up?” I asked, or at least, I tried to ask. My mouth was open too wide at this point.
“It might be too late to save the tooth,” he said. “I need an x-ray to make sure, but just sit tight for a moment.”
They took an x-ray, and when Dentist One returned, he pointed out the trouble area. “The tooth’s got to go. This is why.” He pointed out a crack in the root of the tooth, right there by the jaw. Apparently, the bottom of the tooth was in two pieces, and nothing can fix that. “The decay just went too deep.”
As he put the temporary crown back in, he told me my options. There were three. First, I could get an implant. It would take a lot of time, almost a year, and a lot of money, thousands of dollars. But it was the best option. Secondly, I could get a bridge. This involved sanding down the teeth on either side of the gap and affixing a piece over the space, using the filed down teeth as anchors. This was the most popular solution, but it tended to wear down the bone in the jaw in the blank spot, and it put undue stress on the anchor teeth. Lastly, I could just let it go. Just deal with the empty space.
The last one wasn’t an option for me. At the time, I was 31 years old. Too young for missing teeth. If I was in my sixties, I would have just dealt with it. I didn’t know about the other two, though. I spoke with my friend, Jason, about it. He lost one of his upper front teeth, and he wound up getting a bridge to fix it. He never had any complaints about it, but in the end, I chose to get an implant. It sounded sturdier and healthier from what the dentist told me.
Dentist One then said for me to go back to Dentist Two. She specializes in implants, and she knew how to prepare for it when pulling the tooth. (I was also told about same-day implants, but those are actually not very sturdy at all. They’re actually kind of a scam.)
So, I made an appointment with Dentist Two to have the tooth pulled and the preparations for an implant to begin. Tune in next time for that account, and to find out how a THIRD dentist got involved . . . .

[WHAT FOLLOWS IS A PICTURE OF THE TEMPORARY CROWN, EVEN THOUGH IT'S NOT VERY CLEAR.]

TALES OF DENTISTRY CHAPTER ONE

Most adults have had some kind of work done on their teeth. In fact, most of the people you talk to on a daily basis probably don’t have all of their teeth. Maybe they have dentures, or maybe a few crowns, or even some bridgework. It’s incredibly rare to meet someone who has never had a dental problem. It’s all a part of growing up. Some people run into trouble earlier than others, and others luck out and get to keep all their chompers into old age.

I am of the former camp. Since extensive dentistry is a lot more common than one would think, I hope this serialized story will help people understand what it is like to go through something like this. Perhaps it will help someone, or perhaps this is a cautionary tale. You be the judge.

First, a confession: until recently, I had not gone to the dentist since I took the exam to get into high school. The reason I stopped going? Mostly it was fear. I don’t like people putting things into my mouth. But the big reason was that shortly afterward, I was no longer insured. I had been under my grandparents’ insurance, and they had to drop it. There was no way for me to get insurance at the time, and I never managed to get a job working for a company who would give me dental.

Until February 2008, when I was hired at my current job. By then, however, I figured that if there was something wrong with me, it was too late to fix. (Stop laughing. I can hear you.)

So, I went happy-assholing on my way until one day, somewhere back in October 2009, I started getting these really bad headaches. Imagine having gnomes with pickaxes hammering away at the inside of your skull, and you’re not even close to feeling what was going on with me. The pain ran up and down the right side of my face, from my jaw line to my temple. It was unrelenting. It started out every morning on my way in to work, it would continue through the night, preventing me from getting all but one hour of sleep.

I tried everything, but the only thing that seemed to have any favorable effect was booze, and I couldn’t have that at work. I muscled my way through my job every day, and as soon as I got home, I started hitting the bottle as hard as I could. If I was lucky, I was in a drunken stupor by seven o’clock in the evening.

But at work, there were times I seriously considered suicide, the pain was that bad. I was starting to fear that I had trigeminal neuralgia, which is a condition my grandfather has. It’s a stabbing, constant pain, and no one knows how it starts or how to cure it. Suicide sounded a lot more appetizing at that point. There was no way in hell I was going to deal with that for the rest of my life. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, so I took the day off to go to doctors.

No one knew what it was, so my trigeminal neuralgia fears did not go away, but one doctor suggested that I go to a dentist, just in case.

I decided to make an appointment with the last dentist I had seen, the one from just before high school. We’ll call him Dentist One. When I showed up for my appointment, he did not remember me (no surprise there), but he was not pleased with the idea that I hadn’t sought care with anyone since I had seen him last.

After a few x-rays, he determined what the problem was right away: a piece of an upper molar was missing, and there was some heavy decay in what remained of the tooth. He numbed the area and drilled the decay. As he did this, he said there was the possibility that we’d need a root canal to fix this, but as it turned out, the decay had not reached the nerve yet. It was pretty damned close, though, as I saw when I looked at the x-ray. All it took was a quick filling, and the pain was all over.

But while he was in there, he noticed that I had a significant buildup of tartar on the backs of my teeth. I needed a deep cleaning, and it wouldn’t be fun. It was under my gum line, so they would have to go in with sharp tools to see what they could do about getting me back in action.

For the initial cleaning, they have what I best can describe as a sonic screwdriver (not the kind the Doctor uses on the BBC, sadly) which shakes heavy tartar away. It was shocking. It felt like they were knocking my teeth out, but when I saw the slivers of tartar, I was surprised that there was that much crap in my mouth.

Next came two separate visits, both for the deep cleaning. One would be to numb one side of my mouth, the other to get the other side. After the Novocain injections, everything went very well. It was kind of scary to see blood get suctioned out of my mouth through the clear plastic tube, but it was painless.

It was on the second cleaning visit that Dentist One decided to drop the bombshell on me: he had noticed a dark spot on my x-rays, and he had no idea as to what it was. He wanted to open it up a bit to see what was lurking inside that tooth. Since I was already numbed up, he set to work on me with his drill, and soon thereafter he had bad news.

“This one might have to go,” he said. “There’s a lot of decay in there. It came in from the side, which is highly unusual. I don’t know what could have caused it to happen.”

“Is there a way to save the tooth?” I asked.

“Root canal,” he said. “And even that is a bit iffy. I can’t see all of the decay, so I’m going to send you to a gum specialist. She’s going to perform a crown lengthening on you, and then you’re going to come back so I can take a better look, okay?”

I agreed. Next time, we’ll talk about what a crown lengthening is when we meet Dentist Two.

(The picture below shows me pointing out the trouble tooth.)