I'm Toothless

Okay, fine, I confess. I still have all my teeth...except one.

It started back in April. Or May. Whatever. I blame my Parents as Teachers lady.

Our school district offers this program, you see. Where a representative will come into your house about once a month if you have a child under the age of three, and test your toddler, give the parents helpful advice, and provide her with little games to play as a way to make sure she's progressing okay and will be ready to start school when the time comes.

Well, one of the topics our Parents as Teachers lady discussed with us was making sure our children had healthy teeth. If their teeth grow in wrong, then it can affect their speech, which in turn will affect their education, and so forth. She recommended getting our child to a dentist as early as possible.

It had been awhile--okay, years--since I'd actually gone to a dentist myself. When my childhood dentist retired, I just never got around to making an appointment with the new dentist all my records had been sent to. But if I needed to take my kid to get her teeth checked out, then I figured I better get myself established somewhere.

So I made an appointment. Surprisingly enough, I only had four cavities. In fact, I was actually complimented for how well I took care of my teeth and kept them clean (yeah, take that hubby who insists I don't brush long enough).

They set me up with a July date to get fillings put in the four cavity-infected teeth. Except...in early June, one of the loose fillings they planned to get re-filled fell out while I was chewing gum (evil stuff, that gum).

I called the dentist to let them know. So the the next three times they called to get me into an earlier spot, the time was already filled by the time I contacted them back. Therefore, yep, I had to wait over a month with a hole in my tooth, in which time it started to ache and throb and hurt like you wouldn't believe.

By the day my July appointment rolled around, I was soooo ready for my new filling, I almost bawled. But even after I got it filled, that stupid tooth still ached and throbbed and hurt like you wouldn't believe. As one who hates to pester people, I dragged my feet a week before I called the dentist again. They said sometimes they get the fillings too high, or some such dentist jargon I really don't understand, so they got me in that day to take a look. Sure enough, they had to shave the filling down a bit, and told me, "There, that should make you feel lots better."

After a couple days, it actually did begin to feel better, but this little bump had started to bulge out of my gums directly above "that" tooth. Maybe I should mention sometime in here that this is a baby tooth we're talking about. It never fell out and a new tooth never came in. Yes, I'm almost thirty-two years old and still have a couple baby teeth in there.

I waited, dragged my feet some more, and gave the bulge time to deflate. It didn't. In fact, it just grew bigger. At this point, the husband demanded, "CALL THE DENTIST." Ugh. So less than three weeks after my bump appeared, I called the dentist.


They, of course, wanted to look at my bump. That was on this Monday ago. I got a 3pm appointment and took off work early to show it to them. Turns out, my baby tooth "rejected" its new filling, as they termed it, and I got an abscess in my tooth.

I know, eww.

So, the doctor numbed me up, drained the abscess, and "slipped" my tooth out of there. Right then and there...he pulled my beloved baby tooth out.

Oh, the horror.

It's way in the back, so you can't see it. But when I look at in the mirror, it looks as if half my freaking teeth are gone. I'm quite traumatized (well, I am a little). I feel way too young to be toothless.

I guess the next step is to figure out what I want done with that big gaping hole: bridge it, leave it be, or whatever. I know I want something filling the space, but I'm not sure yet what it'll be.

To say the least, I haven't gotten a lot of writing done this week.

Hope everyone is having a good hump day.