dys· phem· is· tic Monday, February 16, 2004
On The Crumbling of My Teeth
When my mother was pregnant with me, so the family legend goes, she took a drug that was later discovered to rot the teeth of your progeny for the rest of their lives. For that or some other reason, all my teeth had to be filled at the tender age of three (with no anesthetic. "Do you have a dog?" the dentist asked me. "Then when it starts to hurt, just howl like he does."), and they've been rotten ever since.
About a year and a half ago, my lower left wisdom tooth began crumbling away. This was surprisingly painless and we didn't have dental insurance at the time, so I just put the tooth fragment in a box where I store such items and went my way. But over time erosion took its toll and a nerve ending unexpectedly began flapping in the breeze Saturday night, forcing me to make an emergency 3:30 a.m. run to the store for the generic version of Ora-gel.
All the tooth agony remedies consist of 20% Benzocaine (where do you get that clove oil Laurence Olivier used on Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man ?), and thank the Maker for that stuff! It kills the pain instantly -- even if it numbs your tongue in the process. Some lab assistant needs to work on a 12-hour version, though; as time has worn on, the relief has lasted less and less. Now I find myself squirting this stuff down the hole in the back of my jaw every few hours.
Ten years ago I had a different wisdom tooth go off like this and my ordinary, everyday Dentist took care of the whole thing. At one point, after crushing my tooth into manageable pieces with dental pliers, he strolled around the office showing all his assistants my amazing quintuple-rooted wisdom tooth. It was the first and only time so far that I was a freak of nature. What's changed in dental technology over the past decade? After taking x-rays from every conceivable angle, this Dentist decided my case was too complex to handle. My roots hook over my nerves! He would have to refer me to... a Dental Surgeon!
And this is not a matter of me moving over one dental chair to the Surgeon's station. All my x-rays have to be submitted humbly to the DMO to justify the idea, and this may take two weeks! Yes, the tooth has been broken for 1 1/2 years, but this is different. This involves pain -- which it is my opinion there is too much of already in the world. I will be sucking on Ora-gel and gulping down antibiotics and codeine-based painkillers for a fortnight before I can get this taken care of. Perhaps suffering will help me write better Blogs. I'm probably showing my ignorance here, but isn't pulling teeth one of the routine jobs of Oral Medicine?
About a year and a half ago, my lower left wisdom tooth began crumbling away. This was surprisingly painless and we didn't have dental insurance at the time, so I just put the tooth fragment in a box where I store such items and went my way. But over time erosion took its toll and a nerve ending unexpectedly began flapping in the breeze Saturday night, forcing me to make an emergency 3:30 a.m. run to the store for the generic version of Ora-gel.
All the tooth agony remedies consist of 20% Benzocaine (where do you get that clove oil Laurence Olivier used on Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man ?), and thank the Maker for that stuff! It kills the pain instantly -- even if it numbs your tongue in the process. Some lab assistant needs to work on a 12-hour version, though; as time has worn on, the relief has lasted less and less. Now I find myself squirting this stuff down the hole in the back of my jaw every few hours.
Ten years ago I had a different wisdom tooth go off like this and my ordinary, everyday Dentist took care of the whole thing. At one point, after crushing my tooth into manageable pieces with dental pliers, he strolled around the office showing all his assistants my amazing quintuple-rooted wisdom tooth. It was the first and only time so far that I was a freak of nature. What's changed in dental technology over the past decade? After taking x-rays from every conceivable angle, this Dentist decided my case was too complex to handle. My roots hook over my nerves! He would have to refer me to... a Dental Surgeon!
And this is not a matter of me moving over one dental chair to the Surgeon's station. All my x-rays have to be submitted humbly to the DMO to justify the idea, and this may take two weeks! Yes, the tooth has been broken for 1 1/2 years, but this is different. This involves pain -- which it is my opinion there is too much of already in the world. I will be sucking on Ora-gel and gulping down antibiotics and codeine-based painkillers for a fortnight before I can get this taken care of. Perhaps suffering will help me write better Blogs. I'm probably showing my ignorance here, but isn't pulling teeth one of the routine jobs of Oral Medicine?
