random thoughts – Day 2,101 (Wednesday) – another dental adventure

Where I'm spending time lately.

It was another dental appointment day, the third this month. When I first sat in the chair, the sun was directly in my face, frying my eyeballs. Thank goodness for the window shade and the assistant who adjusted it. The tooth that was “built up” two weeks ago, then drilled a bit last Friday to adjust the bite and stop the reoccurring throbbing, spent two hours under the siege of numbing topicals and needles, pokey tools shoving around the gum tissue due to where the tooth broke at the gumline, and so much drilling. Who doesn’t love the added degree of difficulty? 

The dental office has a scanning tool to which I was introduced today when a wand roughly the size of an immersion blender was squeezed into my mouth. It barely cleared the space between my teeth, and then the thing was rotated. I thought for sure my front teeth would be broken and my jaw would crack wide open. A flip top Pez head would be great for dentist visits.

The chatter over my head during the work involved frequent mention of the word “blood” which caused me to silently freak out a little. There was muffled discussion of needing to remove the blood so things would “adhere.” Now, instead of the temporary blue tooth, I have a tooth-colored temporary crown which the assistant declared was a “space filler” and will be swapped for a more attractive permanent crown in another two weeks.

The cost for the unexpected, unbudgeted dental work equals what I paid for my last vacation, which was a week at an all-inclusive resort in Mexico (with airfare). I would greatly prefer a week’s vacation in a warm climate to a month of dental work. At least the blinding sunshine in the dental chair felt a bit tropical for a few minutes, and it’s the closest thing to a vacation I’ve had this year. By the time I left the office (aka 2025 surrogate vacation spot) the sky was dreary, cloudy, and gray, which matched my mood.