Dental hygiene y’all!

Getting a crown (not the royal crown, the tooth crown!)

I’ve just come back from the dentist and my face is still numb and my tongue feels like it’ll flop out or worse that I might be dribbling, but not realize it!

Fortunately I am home on my own with my dog and he doesn’t mind the odd drool! 😂

I have reasonably good teeth for my age (64). I have not had any teeth extracted and only have a few fillings. However, one of those fillings is more filling that tooth – in one of the back molars.

I’ve always gone to the dentist regularly, every six months for a scale and clean and then, over the years, the odd filling. I chipped a front lower tooth a few years back and they built it back up with amalgam. I’ve had it done twice and it’s lasted over 20 years!

I’m a bit paranoid about dental health and hygiene. My dad had false snappers from his 50s (he never went to the dentist until it was far too late!) and I have delightful (not) memories of him at the dinner table, popping the saliva coated teeth on the table. He was unable to eat apples or other crunchy things as he had difficulty biting into them.

My mother also eschewed the dentist’s chair all her life and in the last 20 years of her life she only had a sprinkling of brown stumps in her mouth with many gaps from teeth that had rotted and fallen out! It made life difficult for her as she found it hard to eat most things and in the end she would just reheat frozen sliced chicken and vegetable dinners that she bought in bulk from the supermarket. It was soft and mushy and she could manage to get that down with minimal chewing.

My parents were of a generation and background that did not think dentists were necessary, certainly not on a regular basis. They thought it was a waste of time and money. My sisters and I had no dentist visits as children, my first proper dentist appointment was when I turned 18 and my boyfriend said I should go, he was shocked that I had never been.

I was shocked that he thought one should! I’m so glad he did get me to make that first appointment, fortunately my teeth were fine and I didn’t need any treatment, apart from X-Rays and a clean. But it started a lifelong devotion to dental hygiene and good practice for me. Even so, I did require some fillings over the years, but not too many thank goodness.

So, back to my molar. As I said it was more filling than tooth and over the years my dentist has suggested getting a crown, but no pressure and no urgency. She mentioned it again at my last check up and I thought, yep now is a good time. I’m semi-retired, I have private health insurance and so I booked in to have it done.

It requires two appointments. Today’s was to dig out the old filling, grind down the molar, take a mold for the porcelain crown and put in a temporary crown for two weeks until the permanent one is made and ready to be glued in/on. She put numbing gel on my gum and then jabbed the syringe in, it wasn’t painful, but I could taste the anaesthesia in the back of my throat, unpleasant but bearable.

In two weeks I go back and she will remove the temporary crown and glue on the permanent one. In the meantime I have to chew on the other side, not eat nuts or crunchy things, not floss around the temporary crown and use a manual toothbrush on that tooth 🦷🦷