I woke up yesterday morning and had my breakfast of Grape Nuts (the cereal with the name that lies twice!) and orange juice as usual. And then I felt what seemed like maybe it was some Grape Nuts stuck in a molar, so I probed it with my tongue. "Hm," I thought after a moment. "That's not something extra. That's something missing."
Sure enough, it turned out I'd broken a tooth somewhere along the line. This wasn't entirely unexpected; I complained to a dentist about it maybe three years ago, and he told me it was cracked, and that it probably hurt when I was eating something that applied spreading pressure against the fracture. He also said there wasn't a great deal to do about it until it broke. The only thing that surprises me is that it took as long as it did.
Well, that's not the only thing, really. I'm also surprised at the fact that I didn't notice it, and evidently swallowed the wayward piece of tooth. Perhaps in my sleep Sunday night, or perhaps while eating my Grape Nuts on Monday morning. After all, a small piece of tooth isn't terribly different in consistency or texture from a Grape Nut.
Fortunately, there's a dentist in the building where I work, and he was able to see me this morning. Tomorrow he'll put a temporary crown on it, and two weeks later he'll replace it with the permanent crown. This will cost me nearly $500 after the insurance company covers half, and frankly, I'd rather be spending that $500 on, say, an oxygen sensor for my car, or a plane ticket to one of the weddings I have to skip this summer. Or better yet, nothing at all. But that's the way the molar crumbles.
As it happens, I also have a front tooth that will eventually need a crown. In second grade, while living in Poolesville, MD, I fell off my bike and broke off the bottom half of my top right front tooth when I hit the street. The tooth calcified nicely, rather than rotting (it was a foregone conclusion that the tooth would die after being snapped in half, and apparently when a tooth dies, one of those two things happen). I've had the fake bottom half replaced twice since second grade, but the whole assembly has slowly turned an unsavory color over the years, and the only way to deal with that is to crown it.
So, whaddaya think, gold? I was wondering if I could get it in a nice black porcelain with a white skull-and-crossbones on it. Either would be an excellent advantage on Talk Like a Pirate Day, of course.
Man Out of Time: That shouldn't be...
http://www.manoutoftime.org/article.php?story=20040601224606375