Baby Teeth

I have been taken task for not posting much this week. Sorry about that but it has been a busy week so I have not had time to blog and the one day I did have time to blog Google was having problems with Blogspot (this blog's host) and I could not log into my account.

C'est la Vie

It's been an eventful week. I lost one of my baby teeth and a big mouthful of infection. Until this week I still had 8 deciduous teeth in my head. Now I have 7.

on Wednesday I had a dentist appointment with Dave Eifert, my dentist for the past 25 or so years. I had been having problems with what I thought was a crowned tooth. I have had quite a bit of pain and infection around the crowned tooth for months. But because the pain was rarely too bad I decided to wait on getting it looked at until my biannual appointment came around.

So I get to my appointment a bit late and get ushered into see Judy, the hygienist. She asks me if I have had any problems since my last visit. This is a question they have to ask but with me it takes on a deeper importance.

There have been serious problems with my mouth over the past 35 years starting with a lot of hardware in my pre-teens to pull teeth out of places they ought not be. If any of you are Simpson's fans and remember the episode where Bart and Lisa are at the orthodontist and he does this computerized imagery of what Lisa's mouth will look like without orthodontia-it shows teeth coming out the top if her skull, etc.. That is my mouth. It's a genetic mess starting with misaligned teeth, missing permanent teeth and in my mid 30's a seriously bad bought with periodontal disease which involved two incredibly painful surgeries and a lifetime of fastidious oral care on my part.

And my answer, this time, is yes, I have had pain around my gold crown and she looks at it and agrees that there is something very amiss but it does not involve the crowned tooth. That is a relief since I carry no health insurance and that crowned tooth will be expensive to fix. It is the premolar next to the crowned tooth that is the problem and she says Dr. Dave will have to look at it after she has cleaned my teeth (which other than the rotten tooth my teeth and gums were in excellent shape). Dave comes in and takes a look and says it should come out now if I have the time. I did have the time so he put me in the room where they do extractions and other minor surgery, take an x-ray, wait 10 minutes for the x-ray to develop. We look at the x-ray and it shows all sorts of bad things happening. I get a needle full of novocain in my jaw and wait 15 minutes for my mouth to numb out and than finally they come in and pull the offending tooth out of my jaw along with a cyst. And scape off a bit of decaying matter on the crowned tooth. The event was not particularly painful and the socket has been healing beautifully.

Since the extraction I have had a lot more energy and a lot of inflammation in my body has gone away. So I guess this tooth infection was getting systemic and affecting a lot more than my jaw. I know that I have had a couple of nasty ear infections in my left ear (this tooth was on the left side of my mouth) in the past 12 months and I believe they were very connected to this growing infection in my mouth. Perhaps my sciatica bouts (also on the left side) are also related. It feels as if this extraction has allowed my chi to flow a lot more freely on the left side of my body.

Now I have to decide if I get a new tooth implanted, a bridge or do nothing. Since I did lose a chewing tooth and it is hard to chew with the left side of my mouth so I don't think the do nothing ploy is realistic. And all other options will bring me some degree of intense and lingering pain as well as being pricey.

All I know is I have lost a part of my dental child (this was a baby tooth that was extracted) and I feel better for it.