Showing posts with label Teeth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Teeth. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Could You Hold My Tooth for Me?

Christmas is over and New Year's Eve is approaching. I have this week off thanks to my company realizing that people would rather have this week off than an office party. This is the first year they've done this and they claim that it will also be the only year. We'll have to wait and see on that front. I think it'll be too popular to eliminate. But I'm also not that bright so you can take that at face value.

So what's been going on? Just stuff. I'm getting excited about the vacation that the Wiff and I will be taking to Ireland soon. Check this out. This is my schedule from last Monday, December 21st until the end of January: Dec. 21-23 were working days. Then I have 11 days in a row (including weekends) off. I return to work on January 4th. On January 7th I leave for Ireland for vacation. I will be off for another 11 days (7 of them in Ireland), returning to work on the 18th. Then on the 21st I fly to England to do a training at our Oxfordshire office. The Wiff will also be flying out to meet up with me after I'm done with the trainings in London. We'll fly back to Boston on the 24th. Then there's just a week left of January. Oh, and in the middle of the trip to Ireland I'll be turning 40 fucking years old. Crazy.

Guess what I did yesterday? No, not that (ok, yes that too). I made beer in New Hampshire. My friends Matt and Adam (who are brothers by the by) and I went to this place called IncrediBREW and spent a couple hours making our own beer. Ok, so technically it's a recipe that the place provides but we did all the mixing and cooking. It was pretty cool but I'm willing to allow others to brew my beer for me thank you very much. There's lots of steps and everything is so very precise. In a couple weeks we get to go back and bottle it all up and we should get about 4-5 cases of 22 oz. beers. Niiiice. I won't be at the bottling portion of the deal since I'll be in Ireland being a drunk. I suggested that we start our own "Brew your own whiskey" business. People would come in and whip up a nice batch of whiskey from recipes that we would provide for them. And then in a short 12-18 years, they would come back and bottle it up. Matt and Adam weren't convinced that it was genius moment. It may not be the best business model I'll admit but I'm looking into the licensing anyway. So back off people, it's MY IDEA.

On Monday I went back to my dentist to have my crown put in finally. I had scheduled the appointment at 9 am so that it would be over and done and I wouldn't have to think about it anymore. What a silly goose I am. I should have realized that nothing ever goes so smoothly. I've had this temporary crown in for a month or so and it isn't the most comfortable thing in the world. It's slightly wider than a real tooth and the texture is all wrong. My tongue keeps checking it out to see if it has somehow become a real tooth during the last few seconds. "Is it real yet? Nope. How about now? Nope. Better check again. Nope, it's still a giant Lego piece jammed in my face." My dentist has assured me that the actual crown which is porcelain baked over gold (oooh, fancy!) will match my original toof (minus the giant crack in said toof that started this nonsense in the first place). Ok, doc. Let's do this shit.

So I'm sitting in the chair when he comes in and without so much as a "Hey, how are you doing?", he reaches into my mouth with these big honkin' pliers and yanks the temporary tooth out. Um, ow! Thanks for the warning skippy. He then proceeded to use his evil assortment of tools to hose out the area with ice cold water. You know what sucks? Exposed nerves coming in contact with cold water. That sucks. Then his minion used the sucky-face thing to attack my tongue. Seriously. She went right for it. I dunno what my tongue ever did to her (HEY-OH!) but she clearly hates it. Then he did a dry fitting of the new crown. After asking me to bite down on these little strips of cardboard material he then took out his drill (!!!) and started shaving down the crown so that it would fit properly. He then took the crown and left me sitting in the chair staring at the light. Those dentist chair lights always look like the space ships from the original War of the Worlds movie to me.

He came back after a few minutes (here's the extent of the small talk his minion and I shared: Her: "Do you have any kids?" Me: "Nope." Her: ....) and said that because of a defect in the porcelain, he cannot put in ("install"? is that the right word? "put in" seems wrong. "insert"? that sounds dirty..how about "fasten"? yea, I like that one) fasten the crown. And since the place that made the crown is closed this week, I'm going to have to come back next Tuesday afternoon so he can do it then. Fuuuuuck. Ok, fine. Put the shitty Lego toof back in and lemme outta here. Sheesh.

Cut to yesterday and after we made the beer, Matt, Adam and I grabbed some food at this mexican place up the street from the brewing place. After dinner when Adam and I were headed home (I drove since he lives close by my house and it seemed silly to have us drive up separately), he offered me a piece of gum. "Sure, why not", I said. I'll tell you why not: The toof. Yep. About 15 seconds after popping the gum in my mouth, it yanked the temporary crown out and I had to hand the whole thing over to Adam. That's nasty I know but he has a small kid so he must be used to gross things by now. He separated the gum from the toof and tossed the gum out the window. Luckily it was actually the gum he tossed and not the toof.

And since I was driving and it seemed unlikely that I'd be able to pop it back in with any level of success, he held onto the toof the entire trip home. I appreciate that sir. When I got home I cleaned it up and pressed it back into place. It has this putty stuff on the underside that seems to be holding on for now. I just have to chew EVERYTHING on the other side of my mouth so that it doesn't come loose again. I only have to deal with this for 6 days. I hope it doesn't come out during the night and I end up swallowing it. That would suck ass.

Monday, November 30, 2009

Ow, Quit It. Ow, Quit It.

As I write this I cannot feel the right side of my face. I am the physical embodiment of that Bill Cosby bit. Last year when I was getting my cleaning done I mentioned some pain that I was having in one of my toofs. After knocking on it for a good 10 minutes with a tiny hammer (so not awesome), my dentist announced that I have a cracked tooth and that he would recommend that I get a crown put in. This was just before Thanksgiving of last year. I nodded and agreed that boy-howdy I should totally ruin my Thanksgiving and have dental work done. He popped in a temporary filling and I blew him off for an entire year while learning that chewing on one side of my mouth wasn't so hard to do. Cut to earlier this month when I was back at his office getting my teeth cleaned and I mentioned that maybe I should get that crown done y'know?

And that's what I did this morning. I've never had this done before and if you have not either let me tell ya, while it certainly isn't horrific, it is far from pleasant. There was a lot of drilling and poking and use of that little evil vacuum thing. I don't know how many shots of Novocaine or whatever they use now I got but it still didn't quite take all the pain away. There were a few times when he hit close to a nerve and my death grip on the arm rests of the seat tightened. My dentist is a good dude and I know he noticed (hold on a sec...I'm drooling again) the furrowed brow and white knuckles and he checked in with me to see if I was ok. I wasn't really but c'mon Doc, let's just get this over with ok? The drilling went on forever. Did you know that dentists run the risk of going deaf because of the noise that the drill makes? That seems fair to me.

So now I have a temporary crown jammed in there and I have to go back in late December to have the real deal put in. The temp is a bizarre color, sort of off-white and almost yellow-ish. I'm hoping that the second appointment is quicker and less shitty. I'll have to wait and see. In the meantime I want to have my lunch but I'm afraid to chew. Hold me?

Monday, October 27, 2008

Ow ow Quit It ow ow

So I dun cracked a toof. When I went to the dentist last week to get my teefs cleaned I mentioned to the hygentist that I thought that I had a cavity on one of my molar things. Turns out it is actually a crack in the backside of the toof. We took some lovely x-rays (bite wings they called them. I've heard of "bat wings" before... Oh, that's rich! Am I right fellas?! ahem..sorry) and the dentist dude came in and said that since the one in question is possibly cracked that I should come back the next day so he can "drill out the old filling and see what's going on underneath". Ugh. Oh! And do you know what sucks? Having a dude banging some metal thing like a frickin' hammer on your cracked tooth over and over again. Yea, that sucks real hard.

The next day I went back and he did just that, confirming in the process that my tooth is fucked and I'm going to need a crown. But I don't need it right away because he ground down the back of the tooth so that when my jaw is closed, the tooth won't come in contact with the teeth above it. He also put in a temporary medicated filling (which I didn't know existed). He then told me to call him on Monday (which is today actually) and let him know how it feels. This will determine whether or not I have to get the work done right away or if I can wait for a bit.

It is now Monday and I don't wanna get the work done right away. I feel ok and the sensitivity to cold liquids is gone (that's initially what made me think I had a cavity). This post may actually be the world's most boring post of all time but you still read the whole thing.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Oral Hygiene

I have a quick-ish question: during your daily ablutions when you come to the brushing the teeth portion of the festivities, how do you apply the toothpaste to the teefs?

For to be examples please:

1. dry toothbrush, apply toothpaste, start brushing

2. dry toothbrush, apply toothpaste, wet toothbrush under faucet, start brushing

3. wet toothbrush under faucet, apply toothpaste, start brushing

4. wet toothbrush under faucet, apply toothpaste, wet toothbrush under faucet again, start brushing

5. forgo the whole toothbrush thing completely and just start mashing toothpaste on your teeth with your fingers

I'll tell you what I do. I'm a #4. Although I will sometimes be a #3. Are there other options on the brushing the teeth front of which I am unaware? Might you educate me on this? You might rabbit, you might. Leave yer comments please...