Plastic Tooth

I may mentioned in the past that in late January or Early February I broke a tooth while downing a hand full of nuts at a friends party. It has not been a fun experience. I broke the tooth biting into a single rock hard peanut, but it probably broke because of a captivity (Kids don’t forget to brush lest you break one of your teeth!). I did not have a dentist, as I hadn’t had dental insurance in a couple of years. So I had to find one. Ok pretty routine stuff I know. But here is the problem, I travel every freaking week. What does this mean. It means that I can only go to the dentist on the few occasions I am in town, these are normally the weekends… You know how many dentist are open on the weekend? Yep that’s right.

So basically I have limited my appointments to Fridays when I can get back. My new dentist is only 2 minutes from my house but it took 3 weeks to get an appointment. The guy across the street, literally, never called me back; he must have too much business and doesn’t need my money! So the first time I went in they did a cleaning (even on the broken tooth) and a full work up on me. Turns out I had ½ dozen cavities in addition to the broken tooth. Man. So we scheduled the next appointment 3 weeks out again… This is the way it has been since February. I figured it out after I get all the fillings in and the cap on my tooth it will be time to go in for my cleaning again. So basically I will have gone to the dentist once a month for 8 months strait! Good thing I don’t have a phobia.

The process of repairing a broken tooth is quite involved. I never realized what was necessary. First they ground down what was left of my original tooth. That was kind of weird because 2/3 of the tooth was there the back half was missing and smooth. Then they built the tooth back up with some sort of metal I think. If it wasn’t metal it was something really hard and grey. That is as far as they have gotten in the last 5 months. Instead of completing the tooth my dentist thought it would be better to fill all or most of the cavities. That’s cool I guess, though it was a pain to get the food out of the crack that was left. So finally on Friday they decided to go ahead and work on the broken tooth.

This time they really went to town. I was in that chair for an enjoyable 2+ hours! Again they ground my tooth down except this time the even grinded the good part down. This is so the cap can slip over the remainder of tooth and the build up they had already used on the tooth. Then they took a molding of the stump with some goo. Actually they did this twice; once to send to a lab to get a permanent cap made, and once to make a temporary in house (good dentist now days don’t have to use the metal ones out of the box). The tempory tooth is made of plastic.

So now I have my first replacement part. Even if it is only a little thing I hope I don’t continue to replace parts with say new knees or arteries in the future! Also it is unfortant that this modification is so low tech, nothing like the Steel Jaws from the James Bond movies. That guy had a whole new mouth and could bite through anything. He even killed a shark in the water! I just don’t think my plastic tooth is up for that. Maybe, just maybe I could try it with the permanent ceramic tooth. : )

Also I won’t be imitating any rap artist with a diamond studded grill in the front of my head. The broken tooth is toward the back of my mouth and cap is strait ceramic. No gold, silver, platinum, diamonds, or any other bling-bling. Unfortunately my insurance didn’t cover such work.