Tag Archives: implant

Tooth

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Content warning: this post is about the going to the dentist.

My new tooth was installed this morning. It looks so much better than my old crown (the neon one? The one that was waaay longer than my other front tooth?). And it outclasses that fucking flipper by miles. Is it perfect? No. But I can live with it. The journey that began in July with my old crown falling out is now, hopefully, over.

But I must insert here that my dentist sent me home with the flipper. Just in case, she said. Blah blah slow drying cement blah.

JUST IN CASE? I have twice in the last two seasons had the experience of my front tooth falling out. Twice. Really don’t want to make it a trifecta.

There was tugging and pushing and pressure and enough pokes with that pokiest of all pokey tools that at some point novocaine was administered. Of course that’s no fun either — the roof of the mouth several times, my upper gums.

Even after being numbed up, I clutched my hands. I pressed my clutched my hands into my abdomen as if that could protect me. My trick of leaving “Little DeeDee” home required some maintenance. Enjoy Finn. I told her. I’ll be home soon.

Even numbed up, I had to announce at one point that I was starting to panic —

(they were blowing the air DOWN MY THROAT. And for a while. That was new, and by new I mean awful).

What’s next, I asked. Does the cord come out, I asked. How much pressure? And, what’s next again and again.

I was behaving like such a baby that at one point I felt compelled to let them know that I gave birth twice without pain meds.

Home again, now, I am breathing in ease and I can relax. I’ll work on the couch throw for K and me — what I’m calling the leftovers project.

I’ll make lunch. Walk Finn. Maybe watch another couple of episodes of the Korean series The Extraordinary Life of Attorney Woo, which I didn’t think I’d like but I do.

Dentist Say No More

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Will I lose my front tooth? Will I lose my front tooth to a corn chip? Will I lose my front tooth to a corn chip and swallow it accidentally? Will I ever comfortably eat beef or an apple again? Will I lose my tooth while in California or Florence or even Worcester and be instantly transformed into an Irish hag of fairy tale horror? Will I lose my front tooth tomorrow morning when I take out my mouth guard and there’s that tiny bit of suction? Will I worry so much and eat so little that I lose weight? Could I eat so little and get so attached to losing weight that I get all weird about food? And if I count cooking and food as two of the remaining pleasures in life, how would I fare without them? Maybe I’d bungi jump or go axe throwing on Friday nights or learn to play a vicious hand of bridge or throw out almost every thing I own.

* Can you tell I went to the dentist yesterday? “Ready yourself,” she said after gluing my post and crown back into my mouth, “for an implant. The crown could come loose in a year and a half. Or tomorrow.”

Good grief.

There are many stories to tell about my front tooth, beginning with the time (I was six? Eight?) when I walked into an automatically opening grocery store exit thinking it was the entrance and continuing to when I was maybe fourteen with a poorly executed inward gainer off a very springy diving board. What’s that? Sixty years. It’s been sixty years since I’ve had a live, healthy tooth there. I guess I’m lucky it hasn’t been problematic before now is another way to think about this.

PS I was weeding right before taking these pictures in case you’re wondering about the dirty fingernails.