Teleidoscope

Tue, May 01, 2007

Dentist

Posted at 8:04 pm MDT to Technology

Patrick Nielsen Hayden needs to go to the dentist. Teresa put a note on Whatever to ask people to remind him.

This is especially funny because I just made an appointment this today for this afternoon. I got Nanette to make an appointment for herself, too. She's been saying for months that she needed a new dentist.

In a classic case of Murphy magic, the TMJ pain that had been annoying me for weeks went away this morning. So on the one hand the dentist couldn't look at the problem. And on the other, the hygienist was able to get into the back of my mouth without giving me too much temptation for homicide.

The worst bit was the bite-wing x-rays. They have fancy new digital ones that are quicker than the old ones and use 84% less radiation, but the thing they put in your mouth is stiffer, and my mouth is small enough that they sometimes had problems fitting even the old flexible ones into it without a) triggering my gag reflex or b) gouging holes into my tongue and gums.

I go to the dentist pretty regularly: my Mom had been a dentist's receptionist before she married (Dr. Kasler) and she made sure we all got into the habit of going to the dentist regularly.

She also gave me genes for really bad teeth. We were told once that instead of a few large valleys on the tops of our molars, we had lots of little branching valleys that made the enamel weak. It's a moot point for me and has been for years: my molar biting surfaces include 7 gold onlays and a fancy high-tech porcelain-like reconstruction.

My Dad had great teeth, but I didn't get those genes. And his infancy and childhood were spent elsewhere and may have had better water than what my Mom and I encountered growing up in Connecticut.

I had my wisdom teeth out in my twenties: they sort of came in at 45 degree angles and then started to crumble (I'm not sure they were really enamel). But since they were at least partially erupted, they came out pretty cleanly. I didn't use most of the high-powered pain killers they gave me.

I had the wisdom teeth taken out by an oral surgeon because I wanted to be under general anesthetic (because of the gagging thing) and because the medical insurance I had at the time would cover the oral surgeon but not an extraction in a dentist's office.

I also did something that seemed obvious to me, but no one else ever seems to do it that way: I had both wisdom teeth on one side taken out, then after they healed, I had the other side done. That way I always had one side available to chew with, without worrying too much about damaging the healing sockets.

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