Tender is the mouth.
I now have a little plastic ziploc baggie with three teeth in them. One of them has an ugly little patch of corruption near what used to be its backside, on the inner gumline. Sneaky little bastard. The fourth, the fourth tooth cracked on extraction. Between the cavity and the old filling it pretty much lost its structural integrity. Had to be drilled or sawed or something; I’m not too clear on the details. Somehow in all the excitement I also managed to miss them pulling the upper right, missed it completely. (How does one not notice something like that?) I was lying there in the chair trying to figure out some polite way of getting their attention, um, excuse me, I think y’all forgot one, only I had a block clamping my jaws open and I couldn’t figure out how to make my tongue work and I didn’t want to go grabbing the sleeve of the guy who was sewing part of my gum shut. Bad form. And anyway all the nitrous (“Have you ever had to have nitrous before?” the nurse? hygienist? asked. “Well,” I said, “recreationally,” and we both laughed) leaking through the little nose mask made it terribly easy to suppose, you know, that maybe (weird as it seemed) I’d missed it, they’d already pulled it and I hadn’t noticed, and what do you know.
When I was kid I relished going to the doctor or the dentist. Well, not so much relished. But I remember, say, the pediatrician in—was it Charlotte? I was in second grade then, eight years old—or was it Kentucky? Three years later. Even if I can’t place it, I remember the basics: the doctor had the same freaky-deaky eyesight I do, a ridiculous range of focus, reading highway signs out on the horizon or books dangling from your nose; we used to piss off his nurses by standing all the way across his office from the eye chart and reading it there, all the way down to the bottom, grinning. —His nurses all wore glasses, you see.
My wisdom teeth started coming in early, when I was about 13 or so, and they were straight and even and well-behaved. Never had a cavity growing up. —And if it’s a child-like pride I take in my clean bills of health (“My,” the dentist says, peering at my teeth, “you must have grown up with a lot of fluoride in your water”), so be it; doctors and dentists are rather parental figures. Pleasing them touches something atavistic. Oh, would you look at you, growing up so big and strong. —Unlike aunts and other relatives, doctors and dentists are in a position to know.
t’s with something of a sense of betrayal that I’m looking down at this little baggie as I type. My chin is still someone else’s. I brush my beard from time to time with the idle thought, so, this is what it feels like to Jenn. Helps distract from the holes in the back of my mouth. They’re full of blood and gauze at the moment, but I can still feel where something isn’t, despite the numbness of my jawline; I can feel as I type the empty place where the pain’s going to come roaring in. (Jenn just called to check up on me. There’s something amusing about being able to type as effortlessly as ever, even though I’m rendered a mush-mouthed rube. Wah. If oo go to Ho Fooze, cou oo ge me some soup?)
I hate the taste of gauze.
My straight-shooting, well-behaved wisdom teeth were just too far back to clean properly. (It’s a poor craftsman blames his teeth, but hey.) The cavity in the lower left ten years ago, first blemish on my perfect record, was just a warning shot. The traitorous little bastards were harboring all manner of noxious critters hell-bent on destroying my gums and rendering my wonderfully solid fluoride-rinsed teeth homeless before my dotage. And the upper right (yeah, I’m looking at you, you little creep) was nursing a cavity of its own like a sunken scab, a weird gravelly scar etched across that smooth ivory face. —And if you’re having two out, you know, you might as well go ahead. Get it all over with. In for a penny and all.
Ah, well. At least my eyesight’s still freaky-deaky.
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Oh dear. Poor baby. :(
But I'm SO jealous of your eyesite - so bask in the envy for a while.
Good God. Did I actually type eyeSITE? Yeesh.
So you think you got the whole gang, huh? Three bad teeth, the rest are all good, is that what you're telling yourself?...
The rest of your pearly whites are in on the whole mouth decay racket as well. By the time your dotage crests, I'm pessimistically guessing that you'll be able to count your teeth on one hand. That is assuming, of course, that arthritis hasn't made hand-counting an impossibility. Or that your freaky-deaky eyesight has chosen to remain with you instead of eloping with that nose-hung book or horizon-sign. Even the teeth that remain will be yellow and rounded, useless in chewing or biting, left in your mouth as a symbol of your defiance against dental traitorism.
I just had to put in my bleak observances. I don't know why my outlook is so grey. I'm probably dying of something horrible, and that's causing it.
Have a nice day!
Who's your dentist? I hate dentists. But I need to see a dentist. Can you tell me who your dentist is so I can go see a good dentist and take care of my dental issues?
Stupid dentists.
ouch! This calls for medicinal ice cream.
Yeesh! That's really gross! I don't think I can be friends with you anymore.
On the other hand, you'll recover. So my sympathies, and feel better soon.
The x-ray on this page is pretty much what my teeth looked like five years ago.
It took about three hours to get the four wisdom teeth out (plus the two second molars next to them, which failed to come out fully and were also hard to clean). I only have three intact teeth of the six; the other three had to be smashed out.
(Oh, and I thought it was funny that one of the songs they played as I was going under from the nitrous was a Doors song.)
Two tips: 1.) Vicodin is your friend. 2.) Use that water syringe frequently; you don't want food particles in the holes while they heal.
If you like, Devra, I can magic your spelling error away. (For a small fee, natch.)
Scott? Whatever you're on, increase the dosage. You worry me.
Dr. Milfred downtown is my regular dentist, Kevin; he's swell enough, though, like most dentists these days, is a little too fixated on the cosmetic end. (He wants me to get braces to fix my lower incisors. Ha!) Dr. Milne is the guy who actually went and yanked the teeth. And can I just say how weird it is after a decade of no health insurance to have the stuff? They must love me at the home office: I never remember to make any appointments for checkups or anything. And having my teeth cut out isn't a major deal that I have to wait around and plan for and spaynge up some cash from relatives. Cool. You know, everybody ought to have access to it...
Vachon: vanilla yogurt. Less chewing.
Amp: thbbtttptpptttbtbbttt.
Aaron: A) Jesus. B) Since my teeth were pretty easy to pop (except that fourth), and the wounds aren't that deep at all, no irrigator. I just have to rinse with salt water after every meal. --It's the head cold I got at the same time that's keeping me down. Congestion, hydrocodone bitartrate, and weird twinges of pain up behind your ears where your teeth used to root all makes for a strange floaty not entirely unpleasant but definitely woozy feeling.
So.
Hi, I found your site by typing in the words " Leaking tooth medicinal taste in mouth." I have a pain on the left side of my head from the jaw to the top of the head. Pain comes and goes. A recent MRI shows no tumor. Now I am thinking it is related to a tooth or TMJ problem. Recent X-Rays show nothing missing. I have to find the source of this problem. Any ideas?
Brian Nelson benlson@PartyTentCity.com 713-467-3025. www.PartyTentCity.com 7-10-04
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Brian Nelson
www.PartyTentCity.com
www.BrianNelsonConsulting.com
http://www.Entrepreneur-Mentor.com
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31 Gessner Rd.
Houston, TX 77024
bnelson@PartyTentCity.com
Available 7am-9pm Mon-Sat.
713-467-3025, Fax 713-467-3192