Tooth Update and a Plea……

After heading south with this infection yesterday and getting really sick, I had a Waterloo moment with my tooth and served it eviction papers. I’m done pledging my troth to one so unfaithful.

I did some research on troublesome root canals and they can continue to infect your body through tiny things called tubules even after retreatment. This is what you come to me for: cutting edge dental lingo. These tubules can allow infection to do what my infection has done – travel around your body, especially nearby structures, and they can be hard to get rid of. I’m on my second round of antibiotics and you know me and medicine. We’re like….

THAT

We stay away from each other if we can. We fight. It tends to win.

So, rather than plunk down hundreds this morning for a mere chance at success, I said good-bye to the first of my errant teeth for a $50 co-pay. With any luck, it’ll be the last. I believe you should hang on to friends and teeth until they absolutely prove rotten. But when you finally accept reality and let go, it’s a relief.

Bo drove me – it’s so nice to let yourself be pampered a little and not have to show up and drive yourself to everything, like heart surgery. Well, okay. It wasn’t heart surgery but I did drive myself home from major breast surgery. I had a duct removed (all men turn away here and throw up……). I was bleeding from a nipple and they had to lay me open, remove the duct, and stitch me up. They said it was a precancerous condition and couldn’t be ignored. Now, if you can imagine this, they shot me up with Versed which is supposed to knock you out and make you remember nothing. It does NOT have that affect on me. I talked like a magpie through the whole surgery. The last thing I remember was the surgeon telling the anesthesiologist, “For the love of all that’s decent! Shut that woman up and give her more!” Some people just CAN’T appreciate a good conversation.

Then they woke me up and made me prove I had a ride home. They made me give them a visual. They told me not to drive for a few weeks (breast movement and all that.) However, I had driven myself there and now there would be a car left and that seemed to be a problem so, I did what we women do. I got in the car and drove home.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, milking my tooth removal (all references to milking and breasts is purely coincidental – no animals were harmed in the making of this sentence.) I told Bo the oral surgeon said I require six weeks of bed rest, excessive milk shakes, and no lifting for at least a year. Bo added that she felt I should even demand complete control over the remote. It brought a tear to my eye. I raised her right…….(sniff……).

So, here’s where you come in. My little follower button? The one over there? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->? It has been stuck. Am I boring? (Don’t answer that.) Does no one new come here? I see names I don’t recognize in my comments so I’m thinkin’ maybe you just haven’t thought about signing up. Now that I’m desperately injured and laid-up, it would bring me great cheer if you would de-lurk, as it were, and sign up to follow. It's inCREDibly easy if you already follow other blogs or have a Google account. If not, you have to sign up for one and create a password. I guess that can be a pain in the posterior but consider me and my pathetic plight. Go ahead, make my day. Or my dinner. Or my massage appointment.

P.S. Sheryl asks: "Was it a front tooth?" That picture would kinda make you think so, huh? No, it was the last one in the back, on the bottom. I'm sure no one will notice but me. This picture is false advertising. I'm bling-less!

Copyright 2009

Paddling Down the Old Root Canal

Today I will lay in a dentist chair and envision the canals of Venice. It’ll take plenty of imagination. Maybe I’ll pretend I’m on a cruise and fording the Panama Canal level-by-level. That would definitely be cheaper than the canal I’ll be exploring.

The ear ache, jaw ache, and infection have all added up to this vacation buster. They THINK (operative word here) that I may have an infection under an old root canal due to a crack in a root. This is when you curse your British roots – literally. We just don’t have the best teeth. Every time the family is watching a program and someone appears with crooked, widely spaced, or browning teeth, Grizzly looks at me, laughs, and says, “Must be British!” Mind you, he isn’t exactly a perfect-toothed Osmond brother himself. I could throw a rock at Ireland from my British shore and hit him squarely between the eyes. I’m quite sure the DNA tests would show that we’re actually related. Too many similarities.

By God’s good grace our children will not have to bear the brunt of our inbreeding. Thousands of dollars and a miracle working orthodontist have spared Bo from bearing the family crest. The Wild Man is fast on her heels. Fortunately, his adult teeth were on a world tour and have shown up VERY late to the party. This has allowed us a small respite between orthodontia mortgages.

But Grizzly and I were born in the era of braces being only for the rich and privileged. In fact, only a few of my friends sport those expensive pearly whites that are as straight and even as piano keys. It just wasn’t done. Unless you could look down your nose and see your two front teeth sticking straight out, you were required to get over yourself and move on. I never went to the dentist until I was 13 and my mother got dental insurance through her job. By then I had eight cavities, not counting the vast one between my ears. I took the bus downtown to the dentist by myself. My mother was working. Eight shots and eight fillings later, I rode the bus home and decided this was one luxury I wanted to live without. Had I known to brush my teeth more than once a week I might have avoided the whole affair. Nutrition could have helped, too, but nutrition was expensive and would have required food knowledge. We lived on canned vegetables, Green Goddess and Thousand Island dressing, iceberg lettuce, Wonder Bread, and Velveeta. Honest-to-goodness I never knew there was any other kind of veggies or cheese until I left home.

I decided to do things differently with my kids. Don’t most new mothers? I nursed them endlessly and started brushing their teeth before they HAD teeth. I was determined to overcome nature with nurture. It has been largely effective as they’ve only had one tiny cavity between them in 18 years. But I was unable to influence tooth placement and jaw structure. Fortunately, our orthodontist is not so constrained. Unfortunately, our budget is horribly constrained. Parents get in line behind children and a root canal for the mother does not factor in. My endodontist says if the root is too badly cracked he will not redo it but will pull it instead at a greatly reduced cost.

Come on British roots, don’t fail me now. Crack wide open and make your cheap escape!

Copyright 2009