Ah, Friday night! So much fun for me today!

[thewayne]

Friday night's dinner: leftover pizza from Thursday, plus two pieces of garlic cheese Texas toast.

Not terribly challenging food, right?

Broke a tooth. ON THE TEXAS TOAST!

My right upper 'pre-molar'.

Amazingly, it turned out that my dentist has full hours on Saturday! Even more amazing, they were able to get me in!

And the really cool part? They have a computer-controlled milling machine and MADE ME A NEW TOOTH WHILE I WAS THERE! In and out in 2.5 hours, completely done (unless a problem comes up), and total out of pocket about $375!

I was fortunate in that it didn't cause any hot/cold sensitivity, just pressure, so it wasn't too bad overnight or today before the appointment, and the entire process wasn't too bad, once I was able to wrangle my body into a better position in the chair. I have three fused vertebrae in my neck, and turning my head to the right for a prolonged period of time is a non-starter, but scootching my entire body over and lying more on my right side, that works just fine.

It was a lot less expensive proposition, and simpler solution, that what I was horrifiedly extrapolating in my mind. So that was a good thing. Really, aside from disrupting my entire day, no down side out of it: tooth is fixed, had some really good fish tacos for dinner and brought back some Al Pastor tacos for the spousal unit, picked up some stuff at Target and Sprouts, and got in quite a bit of studying in for my radio license testing over dinner.

Comments

[thewayne]

The Texas toast now being the weirdest, my previous champion was an Arby's chicken finger pulling off a bit of tooth.  I had a run over a couple of years where it seemed whenever I was leaving town on a trip, something would cause a filling to come out!

[viridian5]

It's more confusing to me when a filling just gives up and falls out for no obvious reason, not eating food, not clenching your teeth, nothing, you just suddenly have a piece rolling around in your mouth.

[thewayne]

The first time I had it happen I was just brushing my teeth!  Felt a piece of something in my mouth as I was rinsing, now I can't remember if it was a piece of filling or tooth.  15-some years ago.  I had no idea until that time that fillings and teeth aren't nearly as long-lived as I'd previously thought.

[viridian5]

I take a lot of medications for my disability that destroyed my teeth, which are now mostly fillings as a result and I worry about their aging. Teeth are very important for one's health and easy to mess up, and replacing them individually or en masse is expensive and risky, something I've seen up close and personal from my grandmother and my father's partner.

[thewayne]

Ah.  Yes, that's a very particular problem.  My wife and I were discussing this last night.  I was born in '61, when I was in grade school, I remember classes going through the nurse's office and we had to swish a fluoride solution.  Eventually Phoenix got fluoridated water and that stopped.  For my wife, who's 7 years younger, she didn't have that happen.  But her older sibs, one has otosclerosis, which apparently can be symptomatic of not having been raised with fluoridated water.  Both sets of my grandparents had dentures, my dad had a lot of dental work late in his life, but so far I've been lucky.