kadmium

I’m generally comfortable with the decisions that I’ve made throughout my life, and comfortable with the person that I am. There is one thing I wish I could do over, though. Dental hygiene.

I have a lot of cavities. A lot. Last month I had to go in for a cleaning, and the dentist said, “Ooo … we’re going to need to replace those before you leave the country.” He was referring to five (yes, 5) old amalgam fillings. I’ve known for a while that these would need to be replaced, but I wasn’t planning on doing it right now. Oh, and just to make things more fun one of the fillings was going to have to be replaced by a crown (my second this year).

I decided to bite the bullet, as it were, and get everything done in one marathon session. I figured if I got them all done in one day, I could just lose the one day of work and not have to think about the dentist again for a while. The dentist kind of raised his eyebrow at me, seeming to doubt my resolve, but I was firm.

The following Friday, I arrived at the dentist’s office at 8:00, as scheduled, ready for my day of fun. Since there were teeth on both sides of my mouth that needed work, the techinician got my all of my upper gums numbed, ready for the anasthetic. When the dentist came in, he decided to just do one side at a time, instead of putting my whole mouth to sleep at once. Good move.

He started on my back right molar, grinding, cutting, chopping. After a while he said, “Wow. That is a deep cavity. Here, take this mirror. I want you to see this.” Grumbling to myself, I took the mirror and looked at the gaping hole where my tooth used to be. Impressive.

So my morning of four filling replacements and a crown prep turned into a … drumroll, please … root canal! (And a crown prep. Yes, that makes three crowns in one year.) The root canal was far less traumatic than I feared. It was not more painful than a filling, although it did take a lot longer. He did have time to do the other single filling on that side of my mouth. The left side of my mouth (three fillings and a crown prep) would have to wait for another day.

Naturally, our dental insurance only covers fifty percent on crowns, so a somewhat expensive trip to the dentist suddenly cost close to $900, and we still had more to work to do.

The following Tuesday, I was back. He decided that the crown we’d originally planned on could wait until I got back from Antarctica. The three fillings that he did replace were in adjacent teeth, and I’m pretty sure he just took his little Dremel-like tool and ran it up and down those three teeth and packed them all at once.

On another insurance note, Katie’s car got broken into while she was at the gym the other day. I found out something was wrong when one of our credit card companies called me at home and asked if my wife was at Wal-Mart because somebody had just tried to charge $292 dollars, right after charging $111 at a nearby gas station/convenience store. $111?! At the gas station? $292 at Wal-Mart?! We go to Wal-Mart occasionally, but neither of us would go drop $400 without discussing it with the other. So I thanked the nice people at the credit card for putting our account on hold until I could get ahold of Katie, and started looking for the gym’s phone number.

Katie called just a couple of minutes later and let me know the sad truth. Her passenger-side window had been smashed in and her purse stolen. So the rest of our afternoon consisted of calling all our other credit cards to cancel them and find out if they’d been used. One had, the other two (including our Visa check card) had not. We were assured that we would not be held responsible for the fraudulent charges.

Katie called our car insurance company and in the end, we got a check for $16, the amount of the estimate not covered by our $600 deductible. She was able to get the window replaced on Tuesday, and fortunately the weather has been unseasonably warm (40s and 50s all week. We don’t even have snow on the ground.), so the disruption to daily life was minimal.

Don’t forget to floss!

Hey, I can relate. Several years ago, as I was transitioning from Chicago to Milwaukee after Amy and I got married, I was still using a dentist in the northern suburbs of Chicago. (I still had some kind of insurance deal there.) So this guy was giving my mouth a clean bill of health on each visit. Then I got a tooth ache. The insurance in Illinois had finally expired, so going to my new dentist in Oconomowoc, I found that I had nine cavities. Quite disappointing... I really can't believe they all just developed in the few months since my last checkup in Illinois... Bummer when a dentist gives you the shaft. Of course, when I called the Illinois clinic to ask about it, the dentist who had "worked" on me had left... Anyway, we did four one day, five on another, and I became a lot more diligent about flossing.

The good news is that things have been pretty much trouble free since then. I just found out that a couple of old composite fillings need to be replaced, but it's not a bad scene.

I say the researchers need to figure out how to use that new osteoporosis drug for teeth!

Comment posted by BKM | November 28, 2002 08:11 AM

Yeesh - talk about a kick in the teeth! I don't have any stories like that, but thought I'd let you all know that Sarah lost her first 2 teeth in September or so. It's the bottom front ones - the tooth fairy had to bring a dollar for the first one, being unprepared otherwise. So, the trend was begun . . . . .

Comment posted by Heather | November 29, 2002 05:44 AM

I have this advice: in order to avoid cavities and other tooth problems, you may want to choose one of these routes--become pregnant or grow older. Ruth had good teeth until she began to have pregnancies. I consistently had cavities until I became older. Take your pick.

Comment posted by Dad | November 30, 2002 11:12 AM