When we left Dubuque, my wife’s sister gave us a big bag of cararmel popcorn for the trip home. It turned out to be fabulous road food, and we only had a little left when we got back.
Yesterday evening I had most of the remainder for dessert, then headed outside to chop some wood. (Yes, we’re still building fires every other day or so.) The taste of the candied popcorn was still in my mouth, and I had to have another handful before I started in to work. On my way out the door, chewing, I crunched down on something hard and crackly, like gravel or sand. What I retrieved from my mouth looked like a pebble, and I tossed it away.
This would not have surprised me all that much. About six months ago I came home with a take-out chimichanga that had actual pea gravel in it, so a single rock in a bag of popcorn from Iowa doesn’t stand out all that much. But I was still suspicious: what if it hadn’t been a pebble, but part of a tooth?
A quick trip to the bathroom revealed a missing tooth near the front of my mouth, lower left. It was like the whole thing had broken off flush with the gum. I naturally assumed I’d had a crown come loose and scheduled an emergency exam today with my dentist, the lovely and talented Dr. Harris.
Yes, there’d been a crown, but it had taken some of the tooth with it when it pulled loose. The upshot was that there wasn’t enough of a root left for a regular crown, and two of my three other choices were inferior to the most expensive one: an implant! This involves turning me into a dental cyborg by replacing the natural tooth altogether with a crown attached to a titanium anchor in my jawbone. Oh no. Oh yes. $4,500, chilluns. This is gold-plated dental care, but the oral surgeon down in Santa Fe is an outstanding dude who did a fancy root canal for me several years ago, and I trust everyone involved.
Now everyone will tell me to shop around or go to Mexico instead, but no. This is it, I suck it up and move ahead. When you consider that I haven’t been paying $100/mo. for worthless dental insurance for over four years now, it’s like it’s already paid for!
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Every time I’m tempted to groan about civilization and its discontents – and I’m often tempted – I think of dentistry before novocaine. Funny how dentists are sort of laughable figures except for your own dentist when you need him. I had my first tooth-extraction a couple of weeks ago. I wish I could say it was as much fun as losing my virginity. Thankfully it took over six decades for the former event and a few less for the latter. When we were in high school, John, who would have figured we could ever be toothless old farts some day. Next time we meet up let’s compare artificial chompers.
I’m not a “toothless old fart.” It’s only one tooth, and I expect to be dangerously toothy for decades yet.