lost an old friend

The thing I had been dreading for months has finally come to pass, yesterday, when I had one of my front lower molars (OK I don't know the names of teeth, only that they each have a name or at least a number) removed in a one-hour exercise that didn't really hurt but which was stressful because I guess I had been prepped to imagine there was a possibility of things going wrong. Indeed I am not entirely sure yet that things haven't gone wrong because the tooth in question was somewhat infected and there might not be enough bone, or good enough bone, to put the implant in. I don't know. I am still to be honest not entirely sure I need an implant but I guess I have to bear in mind that if I don't have it my face might get weird(er) looking and while I wouldn't have to endure that, others would. 

Anyway at this point, I miss the tooth. I'd had it, I guess, 46 years or so and we had a good working relationship all that time. I had noticed it develop a fracture earlier this year (actually, I thought something was stuck in it but no, it was a crack) and it was unsalvageable, apparently. I guess it wasn't a thing with feelings, just a tooth in my mouth. Its absence is sorely felt though, and I'm not trying to be funny. 

Yesterday was a bit of a write-off then* but today I have spent quite a bit of time at the PROV scanning reports on Fishermans Bend so you can imagine I'm fairly chipper. This afternoovening I am going to write a thousand - you heard me, a thousand - words on a chapter intended to serve as a model for a joint-authored book. It's going to be about 8000 words ultimately (the chapter is), and it will be quite interesting but not panic-inducing or OTT. 

Image from Australian Woman's Weekly 2 July 1980 p. 109

*thank you to Laura for taking the day off to care for me. 

a day I'll never get back

...but all told I was lucky.

This morning I broke a molar on a crust of very nice rye bread toast. It just came out, rather a huge piece of tooth if you ask me but I am biased. It was about 7.15. The next hour plus was fraught because even though it didn't really hurt, I was worried that the pain would suddenly kick in. Anyway while I was really annoyed about the whole thing I was of course very grateful and pleased that this didn't happen in a diner in Forest Hills Gardens two weeks ago, in fact it was really quite convenient that it happened this morning.

So the next couple of hours were fraught because I had to find a dentist who'd be able to see me at short notice, in the area, but of course they're not at their tools at 7 am, the bastards. I called one person who was advertised as an emergency dentist but he was in fact only a denturist, and his advice to me for dentists in the area was 'get one out of the phone book, they're all pretty good'. Thanks mate. Anyway I ended up going to Christine in Bundoora and she was actually pretty good.

What had happened was a tooth with quite a deep filling, from the 80s, had split. Christine replaced it with what she called a filling but this was really something I wouldn't call a filling per se, because it is actually a whole new created tooth surface. It feels so weird in my mouth, just like a new block of flats on the street would. I spent the rest of the day with a swollen face and of course it was numb for most of the day. The numbness was annoying and touching the numb part was like touching a dead person (guessing) but when the numbness wore off about an hour ago the pain was even more 'annoying'. Still, it's pain I seem to be able to keep at bay with Herron (TM). So hopefully by tomorrow I will have forgotten all of this ever happened.

Thanks for Mia for driving me to Bundoora, to Christine and her unnamed assistant for the grunt work (I think I did more grunting though) and to the animals for being entertainment/consolation during the day.