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and last updated July 3rd., 2004.
WELCOME TO MY DAY..
IT IS NICE TO HAVE YOU SHARE IT WITH ME...
My dentist has a practice in the mall where I work, where we are just one big happy family, and I could throw myself on the mercy of friends and plead an emergency appointment.
So we talked about possible alternatives, and I asked about implants, which Steve is against but Tina approves, and she had the nurse organize me an emergency
appointment with an oral surgeon to discuss an implant, and then she wrote out a prescription for antibiotocs and cemented the crowned tooth back into place, very, very carefully, and told me NOT to bite on it!!!.
And that temporary, very temporary tooth stayed in place for a whole 36 hours.
I still had my Friday appointment, so Tina used that time to make a mould ready for the new crown, and we inserted my partial dentures in that , since everything was going to have to be adjusted, and included the original, now useless crowned tooth in the technician's courier bag for colour-matching purposes.
Well folks..NEVER think you have your days and weeks planned to perfection..
Not even your menus!
Because at very short notice, with just one tiny event, all your plans can just CHANGE!!!
In fact, it's quite amazing how much of a lifestyle change one small part of one's body can make!
Well, the absence of that part, anyway!
In my case, the tooth in question was already expensively crowned to match all its fellows-had been so for ten years, and gave no warning anything was wrong. Started to hurt last weekend and then the crown loosened suddenly and painfully!!!!
But Steve, my regular dentist , was away on school holidays, and the lovely Dr Tina Nguyen, not having worked on my rather strange teeth before, was understandably bemused as to why I could FEEL this, if it were root-canal-filled, and why she couldn't separate the obviously loose crown from the tooth...until she managed to move it and the tooth came away, still cemented in the crown, leaving me looking a LOT younger.
In fact, I hadn't looked like that since I was 7!
And then the staff located the old-pre-computer records and found there had been no root-canal filling..that the nerve was still alive, though very, very sick, and that it had been quite OK, really, for me to be FEELING this!!
In fact, that was one VERY angry nerve, in a very angry toothstump, and all attempts to get it anesthetised enough to start a root-canal procedure did nothing more than leave me looking increasingly like some kind of hideous gargoyle which was just awful for Tina because she knew what she wanted to do, and how to do it, and she knew she couldn't because it was hurting me too much!
There was, luckily, a vacant appointment spot at the end of the week, so they slotted me into that for more of the same..
And I actually went back to work!
I mean, this was the last week of the financial year, the week when all my spreadsheet work for the 12 months either balances, or not...the week when I total off all the staff pays and write their group certificates, and calculate their superannuation totals and fill in a mountain of forms to do with taxation, workers' Compensation, assorted Goverment Regulations and so on..
NOT the week to be home in hiding--or hungover and lightheaded on painkillers!!
So I stayed at work, but tried to stay out of sight, because that ineffectve anaesthetic kept my face all screwed up for almost 8 hours!!
Because, of course, the way my bite works, my bottom teeth tap on that tooth all the time, even in my sleep-and even when I am cautiously chewing cornflakes with what is left of my back ones!
It came out, right out, and nothing I could do would put it back, so it was a frantic call to the dental surgery, again, where it turned out my Guardian Angel had arranged it that a kind patient had just cancelled a midday appointment, so it seemed a bit like my uncertain way ahead was about to be mapped out for me. I took the appointment, of course, and arrived with the redundant tooth carefully packed in my handbag, and after two hours in the chair, during which time we had to cancel the appointment with the oral surgeon, I emerged with a rather long stainless steel post now imbedded in my head, and in pain,but smilingly gapless, with a nonmatching but very skilled temporary tooth.
And both of us a lot happier because this time I had been able to tell Tina how block injections work for me, and where to insert them, and she is one who listens, and believes the patient, and it WORKED , and she could do her work, this time!!
And I went back to work, too!
And I went back to work, knowing I couldn't eat anything requiring chewing for at least three days but still VERY happy to be gapless!.
Which is where I am at, now, able to smile for this photo, but not bite, and not really knowing what is going to happen to my mouth, or how much all this is going to cost me. And knowing, too, that I won't be travelling overseas, as planned, in the next few weeks.
As my elder son remarked, when I told him what had happened,
"That is going to make a dent in your travel budget!"
Indeed so. Which brings me back to what I was saying about not being smug about having everything planned.
Think it's been said before, though, by someone else...something about the best laid plans...
Love to everyone ,and everyone on our side!
-from
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