Our saga begins a decade ago, in a neighborhood about ten minutes from here. The veteran of two root canals, I immediately recognized the dangerous throb in my number 14 molar. Having recently returned to San Diego, where I’d never really found a dentist to call my own – I’d been hoofing it to L.A. twice a year for exams, until one of my dentist’s hateful underlings crossed me – I didn’t know where to turn. I ended up in the office of the most regrettable dentist of my considerable life’ s experience. She forwarded me to an endodontist who performed an efficient root canal and packed me back to devil woman. For reasons that are lost to history, the tooth was never capped, but built up and filled.
Fast forward ten years, to the office of my shiny new dentist, referral from trusted friends. “Why wasn’t this tooth ever capped after the root canal?” she puzzled, tapping the x-ray. “It wasn’t?” I boggled. “We oughta cap that,” she recommended. Weeks later, after receiving dispensation from the insurance company, I’m in her chair, stressed beyond belief because while dental procedures cause me no angst, I’m definitely uncomfortable in any situation that requires me to recline prone with strangers hovering over me and impeding my movement. She finds decay. She finds a crack. Alarmed, she shuffles me to another endodontist to get an answer to the musical question, “Can this tooth be saved?”
One hour and two scary, buffalo-strength shots of Novocaine later, after lying inverted for twenty minutes, marsupial style, in a frickin’ chair with a dental dam, a hose, and two sets of hands in my mouth, I hear the heartbreaking words: “I’m sorry, but we can’t save it.” Cue poignant, level buzz of flatlining monitor…
So the tooth will out, and something artificial must fill the gaping void. To understand just how traumatic this is for me, please understand a few things. First, I grew up in the 1960s in a rural place where a complete set of teeth was still a luxury few could afford. My own father wore dentures, and haunted by Dentugrip and the toothless maws around her, my mother vowed no child of hers would lack for a full mouthful of original condition, factory-installed choppers. From the age of five I was in the dentist’s chair twice a year. The longest I’ve ever gone without a dental exam was two years. I brush. I floss!
And now I’m losing a tooth, all because one dentist was incompetent and another I called my dentist subsequently – for something like nine years! – failed to point out the a dead, brittle, vulnerable tooth hanging out in my mouth. A ticking time bomb of tooth terror, if you will. Suddenly, all that stands between me and the hillbilly patina my mother feared is a stub of jagged tooth remnant with a hastily applied temporary sealant. I suppose we’ll have to put off re-roofing the house and get me an implant, because I’ll be damned if I’m getting bridgework, which the incessant television commercials of my youth trained me to regard as a slippery slope leading inexorably to Depends and Lawrence Welk reruns. I’m only 46 years old, people!
See what happens when Saturn in Virgo wrestles with natal Pluto and Neptune, kids? Innocent teeth suffer.
