Heavens Chocolates, the Dentist and Me.

So to start the story you should know, I have weak teeth. Always have. And unless they invent someway to turn teeth into these awesome titanium like structures that never crack and rot…I’m pretty sure I’ll always have weak teeth. Genetically that’s not the worse thing to happen. I could be blind or have some other horrible thing wrong but lucky enough I just have crappy teeth. 

As a result I have an irrational fear of the Dentist. Mostly because nothing good ever happens to me there. As a child I had plenty of cavities. They seemed to appear with every check up, while my younger sisters frolicked around with suckers and the dentist praises for perfect teeth ringing in their sweet little ears.

As a disclaimer I can’t say as I child I took great care of my teeth. I brushed yes but flossing was more of something I did right after the dentist office and never again. I have a short attention span unless I’m focusing on something interesting. And up till honestly college, sending 10 minutes a night on my teeth was not interesting. I was more into either sleeping or reading a good book.

However my first year of college lead to a horrible discovery. After a routine check up I found I had yet…dun dun dun, another cavity. And I realized with growing horror that I had to pay for the agony and pain required to fix my own stupid cavities now. The dentist I was going to at the time told me that a silver filling was cheaper and there wasn’t any difference except that a silver filling wasn’t as pretty so I took it.  After that experience I became VERY interested in my teeth. Brushing and flossing like crazy, mouthwash twice a day. I would spend quiet a bit of time on my teeth.

Now I had some small cavities right after I got my braces off. I guess the metal bands around my very back teeth were just loose enough that some food slipped in and caused minor cavities. My dentist put them on watch and told me not to worry.

Well go back about 8 months ago. I went to a new dentist up here in cedar city for a cleaning and you guessed it. The cavities I was told not to worry about had gotten bigger.  So I scheduled for about a month out to get the bigger of them filled. But by the time the appointment came I was already preggers. The dentist strongly encouraged me to wait until I had seen the obgyn before getting them filled. So I ask my obgyn and he said to wait till the 2^nd trimester if at all possible. So I figured, they weren’t that bad, no big deal. And was to busy being sick the rest of my 1^st trimester to think of them much more. 

So 2^nd trimester rolls around the first visit I forgot to ask the obgyn if there was anything special  I needed to tell the dentist (the dentist office had said for them to fax over what I could and couldn’t have done)  So I waited until the next visit. The obgyn said to go for it that I should be just fine, but to try and get it all done before my third trimester started which is in May. So setting aside my rather irrational fear, I set to work making an appointment to get my teeth checked out and then an appointment to get a set of cavities filled the week after. I was feeling rather proud of myself until the day I ate that one fateful fry.

It was a beautiful fry really, steaming hot, crunchy and all together perfect but as I bit down I felt a quick flash of pain.  I stared at the perfect hot little fry for a moment wondering how something so perfect, so wonderful could cause pain before I realized that something might actually be wrong with one of my teeth. As I ran to the bathroom to investigate I saw one of my back molars had a thin dark crevasse running down it. Like some demonic little dwarf had gone mining there. I gulped and panicked. I would need a root canal! It’d hurt! Take days to take care of at least and it would be so expensive! Pregnancy has made me prone to sever anxiety attacks and it took my poor husband awhile to calm me down. 

We went into the dentist, luckily no root canal was needed. However my cavities had worsened and multiplied! That day I got three cavities filled all of them apparently were very deep. I however was feeling a bit more cheerful  because I had caught them before more serious dental work was needed. I figured I get all my cavities filled in as soon as possible and then when Addie came I would have one less thing to worry about. So I set an appointment for every week of April. I figured surely nothing could happen in a week right? Wrong. 

The next fateful fall happened about 3 days later, between two of my teeth that were set to be filled a black dot appeared between them. I thought perhaps it was just food stuck and I flossed till my gums were a bloody mess. No luck. It wasn’t food, it was my teeth. Again hits another anxiety attack and my husband trying to calm me down.  I finally did. I was brushing after I ate any sort of food and being as diligent as ever with my teeth. There was nothing more I could do but hope, wait and pray. Ironically though all the teeth that were bugging me and so serious to fix were the ones that 8 months ago had the smallest cavities. The teeth with the biggest cavities hadn’t bothered me at all so they were set to be the last ones filled.  

Then hit the next tooth disaster. I was eating some dehydrated apples  and bit odd. I felt agonizing pain rip though my jaw. I was in tears it hurt so bad I went to the bathroom to check but it was the tooth that had been filled my first year of college and I could see nothing wrong with it. I gulped down the only pain reliever I am able to have (Crappy Tylenol…does that actually work for anyone??????)  still in tears and tried googling what it might be. The closest I could find was perhaps a loose filling. My next dentist appoint was in three days I figured I could make it till then.  The pain would come and go. Sometimes biting down hurt, other times eating sweets made it ache unbearably and sometimes just chewing would lead to waves of pain that left me crying and wishing for Asprin. But sometimes…it wouldn’t bug me at all which lead me to be even more confused as to what was going on. 

Meanwhile my darling mother in law sent a birthday package which as of yet I have not much touched but in it was a box of chocolates. Not just any chocolates, but chocolates from a little shop called “Sublime” Which I do believe is ONLY found in Texas. In that shop the chocolates are made of babies laughs, drops of sunlight and fairy dust. The chocolates there come in so many flavors it could make your head spin. I found myself nibbling the edges of one longingly trying to pretend my poor mouth was not in agonizing pain to have sugar touch it. Then sighed and put it back while counting the chocolates again and again and trying to somehow to taste the sweet perfect chocolate by smelling it. 

Today I went to the dentist again. They looked at the tooth confused as I was. They said I had symptoms of a badly cracked tooth but they couldn’t seem to find it on either X-ray or just by looking. The doctor finally found a crack and informed me that silver fillings made the teeth weak and brittle and more prone to cracking (which left me fairly fuming at my other dentist for not telling me that) and with the fact the pregnancy was already weakening my teeth that was all it took. So He said to try and save it from a root canal he would take out the old filling and fill the crack as best he was able…but not today because alas he had no time. 

He worked on the teeth that had the black dot. He said my teeth were going pretty fast now. Little known to me a week made all the difference in the world. He said he was barely able to save “tooth 19” and that in a few years it will need a crown but hopefully never a root canal. That’s when I realized I needed to move up my appointments. My husband looked on in some sort of awe at me. He knew my feelings about the dentist. Knew I wanted my birthday to be special but my mouth was sore, my birthday was tomorrow. I was so tired of being worried about loosing my teeth or needing a root canal. So sick of it hurting to eat that I scheduled an appointment to get my cracked tooth fixed the morning of my birthday and my last set of cavities filled the day after. Tic Tac Toe, three in a row. I just couldn’t take it anymore.

Hopefully the teeth that started out with the biggest cavity that haven’t bothered me don’t need a root canal and are no worse off then my other teeth. I can only hope though. I’ll keep you posted, and that ladies and gentlemen is how I got 10 teeth filled within the space of two weeks.  You’re all jealous aren’t you?

So those of you like my husband and lovely sisters be grateful. You have wonderful teeth. For those of us with sad, strange little teeth. Good luck, my heart goes out to you and trust me I feel your pain.