Brush Your Teeth

Yesterday, Sunday morning, an old crown broke off in my mouth at Starbucks. The story isn't particularly interesting. Suffice to say that while munching on a sausage breakfast sandwich and sipping a vente americano mocha, gleefully defying my own allowance rules (arguing internally they are ineffectual until the New Year), I suddenly crunched down on something hard amongst the delicious mixture in my mouth. Carefully using tongue to sort through the mush, I produce a white nugget while simultaneously swallowing the remainder -- oops.

Since then a barely noticeable throb turned into a headache, but today I managed to get into my dentist. The old crown's integrity had been shot and I'd either have to get a new one now or later, and I don't like to put this kind of thing off. He drilled holes into multiple sides of it until cracking off the porcelain and then cut the metal band off my original tooth stub. Turns out there was some kind of leak or something in it, so it would have caused me trouble later anyway. I'm not surprised.

That damn tooth and its crown have always had it out for me. There are two times in my life I remember being in absolutely agony: when my wisdom teeth were coming in infected and sideways, and when that tooth died. I was living in my $315/month studio in Tacoma and for an entire night I simply writhed in agony. Dr. Mostafa told me later that the intense pain was my tooth dying and I got my first root canal. Fast forward six years to 2006 and my year of dental appointment misery and I come to find that something had survived. Bacteria found a home at the end of one of the canals and the zombie invasion of my gums had to be put down. I went to a specialist named Thomas Rude who drilled through the crown and then used some advanced imaging equipment to find and then burn out the roots again (this is known as a "retreat", as in "retreating a root canal" not "run away!"). After this pleasant procedure the aftereffects left me feeling like crap for half a year and in that time I even got a CAT scan to make sure I didn't have any kind of tumor. As anyone who has had mysterious symptoms can tell you: it is impossible to accurately track down discomfort. Eventually my head apparently healed itself and I felt normal again... until this.

I can't say I'm surprised. Anytime I got a headache, it felt connected to that side of my face. I have this feeling me and the tooth are not through with each other yet. This is some kind of revenge for taking shitty care of my teeth, something I've been excellent about since that memorable night of demonic torture. I think my mouth, teeth, and gums are particularly sensitive to trauma and echo it long after the source event has passed. Now I feel less sickly, but hopefully tomorrow I'll wake up without a headache instead of with one.