![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
slipjig3I have a mouthful of fail. My teeth are and always have been an atrocious, snaggly mess, which two tours of orthodontic duty haven't done much to rectify. I have gaps where my baby teeth stood until my late 20s with no permanent teeth beneath them to shove them on their way, an overbite that could provide shade to small children, and other sundry Sid Haig-like unpleasantries. The one and only thing that went right for me dentally was my set of wisdom teeth, which grew in as scheduled with no attendant horrors. Naturally, of course, they're now falling apart.
All four, my previous dentist informed me, would have to be dealt with, due to some nasty chipping and loss of structural integrity. Two have them have been dealt with because they'd reached the point of no return: one was yanked, and the other was given a filling roughly the size of Bulgaria. Just before the Big Move, the third one, on the bottom right, blew out like a bald whitewall: I lost a filling out the side when the last of the infrastructure on that end crumbled. It didn't hurt, though, so I plowed through the moving preparations with an eye on getting the tooth dealt with later.
Unfortunately, the "not hurting" part expired last week. Joy.
So! I called Davis Square Dental on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
primal_pastry's recommendation, and they were able to sneak me in this morning. Dentist is a great guy (he knew where the hell Glens Falls is), spent a minute or two checking out the situation back there (with all attendant wincing), got an X-ray, then came to me with the same sort of look that accompanies statements like, "I am so very sorry, little Billy, but while you were at summer camp Sparky the Hamster went up to Rodent Heaven."
Upshot: Tooth needs to be dealt with, natch. Because of the other problems in my mouth like the aforementioned gaps, yanking the thing is not an option because of how little chewing surface I have going on right now. The damage to the Tooth of Doominess is extensive enough that we're looking at a crown rather than just a filling. He's going to try to build the tooth up to support the crown, but in the (likely) event that fails, we're looking at a [expletive deleted] root canal.
I whimpered like a man. I know that root canals are painless if they're being done right, and in the grand scheme of things it's no worse than other stuff I've had done. But let's face it: the words ROOT CANAL are not exactly ones one wants to be pencilling into one's day planner. Double joy with a green cherry on it.
So next appointment is a month from now, with a promise to call if they have any cancellations. Praying for simplicity, preparing for worst-case scenarios, and using my journal to bitch yet again about my stupid teeth. Stupid teeth.
All four, my previous dentist informed me, would have to be dealt with, due to some nasty chipping and loss of structural integrity. Two have them have been dealt with because they'd reached the point of no return: one was yanked, and the other was given a filling roughly the size of Bulgaria. Just before the Big Move, the third one, on the bottom right, blew out like a bald whitewall: I lost a filling out the side when the last of the infrastructure on that end crumbled. It didn't hurt, though, so I plowed through the moving preparations with an eye on getting the tooth dealt with later.
Unfortunately, the "not hurting" part expired last week. Joy.
So! I called Davis Square Dental on
primal_pastry's recommendation, and they were able to sneak me in this morning. Dentist is a great guy (he knew where the hell Glens Falls is), spent a minute or two checking out the situation back there (with all attendant wincing), got an X-ray, then came to me with the same sort of look that accompanies statements like, "I am so very sorry, little Billy, but while you were at summer camp Sparky the Hamster went up to Rodent Heaven."Upshot: Tooth needs to be dealt with, natch. Because of the other problems in my mouth like the aforementioned gaps, yanking the thing is not an option because of how little chewing surface I have going on right now. The damage to the Tooth of Doominess is extensive enough that we're looking at a crown rather than just a filling. He's going to try to build the tooth up to support the crown, but in the (likely) event that fails, we're looking at a [expletive deleted] root canal.
I whimpered like a man. I know that root canals are painless if they're being done right, and in the grand scheme of things it's no worse than other stuff I've had done. But let's face it: the words ROOT CANAL are not exactly ones one wants to be pencilling into one's day planner. Double joy with a green cherry on it.
So next appointment is a month from now, with a promise to call if they have any cancellations. Praying for simplicity, preparing for worst-case scenarios, and using my journal to bitch yet again about my stupid teeth. Stupid teeth.
