FALLING DOWN ON THE JOB

Wow, I haven't been writing near as many blog posts lately as usual, have I? The primary reason is lack of photos to go with them. For one thing, it's not a great time to be taking photos out of doors. Those early arctic snaps turned everything to mush, and there's no beautiful snow-cover to hide it. For another, there's all that cedar pollen floating around in smokey clouds. You really don't want to be out mucking about in it.

My other posting problem has been frequent trips to the dentist of late. Despite being a religious zealot when it comes to brushing and flossing, I have ever been unlucky in teeth.  I had fillings in almost every jaw tooth as a kid, and got my first "overlay" in college. That kept falling off when we  were newlyweds in Indonesia, which meant special trips to Jakarta to have it put back on, so they finally replaced it with a full crown when we came back to the states -- the first of many!

You see, what they don't tell you up front is that when you have more filling than tooth, then eventually the teeth start to fracture, and decay gets in. Then you need more crowns , and occasionally, even a root canal. I HATE root canals! I can't tell you what a relief it was when my dentist back in Plano finally told me that I was pretty much done with crowns, as all my big fillings had been covered. He lied.

You see, what they don't tell you is that crowns only last so long, and if you have had a root canal, you may never know that one is failing, because you feel no pain. Which is why I ended up needing that one implant last year. My new dentist here in Wimberley is a very proactive sort, and warned me that four of my oldest crowns aren't fitting as snugly as they should, and that if we wait too long I could end up with a broken tooth or another implant.

So I let her start on a new crown for the tooth at the top of her hit list last week, and came home with a temporary crown until the new one is ready. Since I don't want that temp to pop off, I've been careful to eat on the other side of my mouth, right? So imagine my distress when I bit into something soft Saturday at dinner, and ended up with a mouth full of metal! Only, guess what? It wasn't the temporary crown that popped off -- it was a permanent crown, from the opposite side of my mouth! And of course, it being Saturday, I had to go around with a super-sensitive stub (just sucking in cool air could set it off) for two days before they could get me in.

Turns out that tooth was number two on her hit list. She re-cemented the original crown temporarily, but told me that as soon as they finished up with crown #1, they would be scheduling me to have an all new crown made for tooth #2.

Guess what popped off again last night?