Click images for desktop size: "Nurse" by Unknown Went to the dentist yesterday. It didn't go exactly as I expected.
Almost two hundred bucks for 10 x-rays and a referral to an oral surgeon. Seems like there's more than just the 3 teeth that are bugging me. I have to have six extractions.
I wasn't overly impressed with the dentist. But I think, in retrospect, that she was pretty good. She made a good guess at one of the chemo's I've had. She could tell by the odd mode of my jaw bones disintegrating that I had had leukemia.
My bones are still dying. It looks like it shows up first in the teeth and the jaw. One of the teeth that bugs me without actively hurting has no bone beneath it at all. The big sign of leukemia is that the bone beneath it is dead but the bone to the teeth all around it appears to be okay.
The two teeth that really bug me and hurt to the point of numbing both sides of my face have dying bone. The teeth around them show signs that the bone is dying. The "hope" is that removing the teeth over the dying bone will cause the bone on either side to regenerate.
Two of the teeth are infected. I don't know why but they don't hurt me now, or maybe that's yet. The infection will start killing the bone, which isn't dead yet. (I prefer the word dead to the word necrotic - necrotic sounds so foreign, like its happening somewhere over there instead of happening to me.)
The last tooth to be removed is the broken tooth that got crowned. The crown shattered the tooth underneath it to the gum line. I guess the good news is that it doesn't look like too difficult of an extraction. They shouldn't have to cut the gum to pry it out or anything like that.
I asked before about just pulling them all. For some reason that's a little beyond me this is a bad idea. Because of my bad immune system because of chemo and leukemia and the bad healing due
Click images for desktop size: "Laurel & Hardy" by Unknown to the diabetes it could spur further infections and cause worse health issues. It has to be addressed in this piece meal fashion. As I sit in the chair I kept thinking this might be another way to extort extra bucks out of me. But I remembered my twenty five buck dentist told me something similar.
The good news is no cavities! I've never had a cavity or a filling.
She did ask me if this wasn't causing me any pain. She thought I seemed rather calm. At first this irked me. I wondered if she wanted me to show up looking like Curly, from the Three Stooges, with the handkerchief tied up around my head around the jaw and making little rabbit ears on top of my head, then I should have walked in clutching my jaw and moaning as loudly as possible.
Of course if I did that I'd have been obligated to try and pull my teeth before coming to the dentist. You know by tying a string to one of them and then tying the other end of the string to a doorknob and then waiting for someone to open the door. Plans that fail even for the Stooges are usually a pretty bad idea.
The dentist asked if I need to be knocked out for the extractions. I said no. Then she asked if I'd want nitrous oxide. You know, laughing gas. Again I thought of the Stooges and their adventures with laughing gas. It was tempting but I said no to that as well.
Just stick me with long needles full of Novocain. I'm a maniac. I can take it.
They were supposed to call me with an appointment at the oral surgeons. No one did. I fell asleep and didn't wake up until it was too late to call.
I guess part of it was psychosomatic and part of it was disappointment but my teeth seemed to hurt about four times a s much as they did before. I had a difficult time closing my mouth on that plastic thing for my x-rays. I still can't chew. But have gotten good at swallowing my food whole.

Click images for desktop size: "Purple Hoops" by Unknown Loosing six teeth scares me, not because of the pain but because I figure I'm going to look like a jack-o-lantern. My friend wants to take off work so she can drive me home from the tooth pulling episode. I think that's sweet but its not a bad walk. The puppies and I go further than that almost every day. She points out I'll be novacained and dopey from pain and a new mouth.
I just think I'm going to be too embarrassed to let anyone see me, at least for a while.

My friend has a rather frivolous meeting today. She has to go to the national office which about ninety minutes away. The meeting might accomplish something but I think the main point of it is office political and a chance to show the acting VP's control.
Thing is my fried ended up volunteering to take five other people with her! The new car can handle it but it also meant she had to get up at 6:30, which should have been six. She's a gal who needs her sleep! My puppy has empathy.
Saturday we have to take the car in for some light work. We get a loaner!