I can remember going to the dentist when I was about 5 years old and living in Costa Rica. Needless to say, between the lack of fluoridation in the water and all the sugar cane, it’s amazing I have any dental enamel left in my mouth. I remember coming home after one check-up with the news that I had 10 new cavities to be filled. Those were the days of silver amalgam fillings. I still have some of that shit in my mouth these 66 years later. Since then, I have been pretty lucky with my teeth. Other than the removal of three wisdom teeth (the fourth is a strange deeply-rooted peg tooth that has been left in my jaw to keep future dentists amused when they encounter it), I have had good luck with my teeth. I’ve had a few old fillings replaced and am currently getting my second crown for a back molar that just had too little tooth left to do anything else with.
I have not been 100% diligent over my adult life with the regularity of my dentist visits, but now I go religiously every 6 months. Eyes and teeth deserve that sort of attention as we age. My natural body chemistry portrayed in my lipid profile with fairly low cholesterol has not only precluded much plaque build-up in my arteries (so Lifeline Screening keeps confirming to me), but it seems to keep plaque build-up on my teeth quite low as well. That gets reinforced every time I go in for a teeth cleaning. But time wears everything away sooner or later and a few weeks ago suddenly felt a rough tooth in the upper back of my mouth. Sure enough, an old fillings had given way and the dentist said it was time for a crown.
I was referred to my dentist by my sister, who lives nearby. Of all the dental offices I have gone to over the years, this one is by far the most pleasant and efficient. When my friend, Mike, tells me about getting a crown, it involves multiple visits and a good deal of waiting for an appointment. My dentist always gets me in quickly and she does a crown start-to-finish in one session, which makes it all much more effective for me. This morning I am spending 2.5 hours in the dentist chair….but then I’ll be done with it.
I feel sorry for people who have trouble with their teeth. Root canals seem especially nasty. Anything that gets that close to the brain just hurts like a bitch. Toothaches and earaches are always the worst. I get regularly told by the dentists I have frequented that I have good strong teeth. I do not have particularly pretty teeth. They are straight and I’ve never had to have any orthodonture work, but they have never been pearly white. They are also not particularly big teeth. That means that my teeth usually just go unnoticed, which is just fine by me. I even once went for a teeth whitening at a place in Manhattan, and miserable as the process was (plaster crap in my mouth for an extended period of time), the results were even more miserable. I recall the technician telling me that the whiteness of my teeth had gone up by four levels. Based on what Little change I saw I suspect there must be about 1000 levels so I have just made do with the teeth coloring. I have understanding full well that I am unlikely to be hired for any Pepsodent commercials.
The one lousy experience I had with my teeth, was when I had my wisdom teeth removed. One of them could just be pulled, which is not a particularly pleasant experience in none of itself, but the other two were impacted, which basically meant that I needed to have oral surgery to remove them for my jaw. Naturally, I got drugged up with lots of Novacaine so the procedure itself while a little bit messy, and bloody was not terribly painful. For some reason, I was walking home from this dental surgery (this was when I was living in Rockville Centre on Long Island), and I recall asking the doctor when the Novacaine would wear off and whether I would feel any pain. He told me it would take an hour or two and that by then my mouth and gums should have healed well enough so that the pain would not be too acute. It seems that the gums are one of the fastest healing parts of the human body, so I took him at his word and proceeded to walk home. About halfway home, my jaw started to throb, and by the time I got home, I was practically writhing in pain. That was not a particularly pleasant afternoon it sticks out in my memory because it’s one of the very few times I’ve ever had stitches since they had to close the wounds in the gums where the teeth had been impacted.
That reminds me that Weill I consider myself to have a fairly average pain threshold, pain from dental work is no one’s favorite thing. today the doctor gave me a long steady course of Novacaine in my outer gum after having mom in the area with a topical anesthetic that reduce the discomfort to a pinch, and then she added another dose on the upper inside gums just to be sure. When she started in on the drilling to remove the damage tooth, I found myself feeling a little bit of that high-pitched intense pain that one gets when the drilling goes too deep into a tooth. I mentioned it to the doctor and she said, “well, we don’t wanna have that!”, and she promptly stuck the Novacaine needle back into my mouth for a second dose. I’m glad she did that because when she went into the heavy duty excavation work with two or three calibers of grinding tools I really didn’t feel a thing even though the sounds coming from my mouth we enough to make someone think that they were being tortured. This has probably been said many times the best part of any dental procedure is when it’s done and I was certainly glad when the doctor declared that the tooth knob was properly prepared to receive the new Crown.
The original version of the Crown was done in a material that had a light violet hue. The hygienist trim that one and fit it into my mouth to make sure that it was a reasonable fit with plenty of room between the remaining teeth before she sent it off For 20 minutes of baking. When it came out of the oven, the violet was gone, and it was replaced by a color that more or less matched my existing teeth. It made me remember my teeth whitening experience and made me wonder where on the spectrum from one to 100 my Teeth coloration resides. Next time I’ll have to ask. The doctor came in, put the special glue in to the crown and set it in place with a firm hand, followed by an ultraviolet ray gun that presumably was used to harden the adhesive. The whole process took 2 1/2 hours which was exactly what I was told to expect. There was little or no pain during the process and now that I’ve been out and about for some six or seven hours I can report that there seem to be no lingering discomfort. I think that validates my opinion of my dentist and her operation and I’m declaring today’s procedure to be a crown in glory for its efficiency, timeliness, and absence of discomfort.