<\/td><\/tr><\/table>Since I was still weakened from the harvesting of my organs, I was in no shape to endure a lengthy proceedure to rebuild a tooth which was probably doomed to shatter yet again, if it didn’t simply die outright. My dentist proposed an alternative: He would seal the tooth up with a temporary filling, thus entombing the crucial innards in a nominally protective shell, but otherwise leaving off the nicer outer layer of whatever it is they use to make fillings the right shape and color. If the tooth survived for a couple of weeks, we could conclude that the last vestiges of tooth were still a suitable foundation on which to build. If not, well… at least I wouldn’t have wasted money and precious painful hours on the thing. His offer was something with which I was down.<\/p>\nThe repair work was not attractive. It was the color of dirty concrete, a small malformed lump that hunched shamefully between its peers. But it was a back tooth – a molar in your fancy-pants Dentist parlance – and thus I never saw it. Which led to a serious bit of foolishness on my part.<\/p>\n
My Dentist fell ill. (And, as I found out later, died<\/em>. He was a nice enough fellow and already semi-retired. His office was often closed, but when he was working he had a battalion of doting assistants to make his paths straight.) His office contacted me to refer me to another dentist, but I assured them I’d handle it myself.<\/p>\n Which I didn’t. <\/p>\n Dr. Weeser’s ad-hoc repairs worked so well and went unseen for so long that I forgot that the tooth still required attention. I didn’t think of it again until it began hurting, at which point I realized I’d just spent half a year hammering away at the fragile temporary shell he’d given me. <\/p>\n I quickly secured a new dentist. He’s a strapping young man, which means I don’t have to worry about him passing on anytime soon. But it’s also bad because I can’t wrap my brain around the idea of having a doctor younger than I am. I resisted the urge to call him “sonny” or “kid”, but only because he was about to put power tools in my mouth. Yesterday I paid him a visit, and my oversight was at last rectified. About the proceedure I will make the following editorial comment:<\/p>\n Ouch.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n After he blasted away the “temporary” covering, he looked at the bits, “I have no idea what this was made out of. It’s nothing I’ve<\/em> ever used before.” I wanted to make a few suggestions, but my mouth was full of gauze and agony. I know he was working on one of my molars, but if I had to judge where the tooth was based on where his arms were and how far I had to open, I’d say the tooth in question was somewhere between my first and second ribs. I lost sight of him a few times during the process, but I could still hear the deep, far-off echoes of his drilling equipment as he ventured ever deeper into my skull. Sometimes a spray of enamel or Dr. Weeser’s Mystery Filling would fly outward, and he was forced to reassure me that he was not<\/em> using a pickaxe in there.<\/p>\n When the proceedure was over – that is to say, several days later<\/em> – he gave me the prognosis: The next time this tooth breaks – which is an inevitable<\/em> event, he assures me – it will be time for a crown. I’ve never had that done before, but after he explained exactly what was involved it made me feel bad for being such a sissy about the fillings. <\/p>\n The sensation has finally returned to my face, although I notice I’m still lacking a bit of functionality. I can’t curl my lip and my smile is crooked. I know I’ve said before, but I think it bears repeating:<\/p>\n Ouch.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last year I broke a tooth a few hours after coming home from surgery, an ordeal which I cataloged here. The remaining tooth was little more than a fragment, and to attempt repair it was to stretch the definition of tooth “filling”. This would be the third such reconstruction. Each time it’s attempted, that last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[79,90],"class_list":["post-1683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-comic","tag-whining"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}