Opinions of a Wolf

I have always been accident-prone.  It’s a running joke in my family, in fact.  I shattered more dinner dishes than I’d care to mention.  I was assured that walking into walls would go away with the end of my growth spurts.  It did not.  In fact, I’m currently sporting a bruise from walking into a wall last week.  I also managed to snap my leg in half on a swing-set when I was 11 years old.  Odd accidents are nothing new for me.  So it should come as no surprise that I managed to knock out one of my two front teeth this weekend.

The short version of the story is that it was Sunday afternoon/evening.  I had just mopped my kitchen floor.  I walk/jogged from the bedroom area of my apartment to the kitchen area in my bare feet, forgetting momentarily that I had just mopped.  And I managed to face-plant on the kitchen tiles.  Goodbye front tooth.

Now, when I was growing up the vast majority of the time we didn’t have health insurance.  Emergency care, therefore, is ingrained in my head as only for “real” emergencies.  Thus, in spite of multiple friends’ pleadings for me to go to the ER that night, I declined and said I would wait for the dentist’s office to open in the morning.  After friends helped me get cleaned up and tucked in, I popped some tylenols and went to sleep.

I probably should mention at this point in time that I had an exposed nerve.  Yet I was unconvinced this was an emergency.  I woke up Monday morning, waited until 8:30, which is when I believe doctor’s offices should open, and called my dentist.  The phone informed me he wasn’t opening until 10am.  Ok.  At this point I was in pretty bad pain, so I called the emergency number and left an incredibly apologetic voicemail explaining that I wasn’t certain if it was an emergency, but could he please call me back so we could discuss it.

My super-sweet dentist, who speaks with a lilting Arabic accent, called me back about 20 minutes later.  I lispingly told him one of my front teeth was gone, but the root was still intact so maybe it wasn’t an emergency.  I then started to half-laugh, half-cry at how much like a hillbilly I looked.  My dentist calmed me down and promised me he could fix my smile, this definitely was an emergency, and please come as soon as possible.

My wonderful friend Nina drove me to the dentist’s where I was greeted with shocked looks from everyone in the office.  To sum up all their comments, “Sweetheart, this is so bad!  You must be in so much pain!”  To which I responded, “Well, I’m a tough broad.”  The first thing they did was to numb my mouth, part of which included putting novocaine directly into the exposed nerve.  That is the only point at which during any of these procedures I cried.  They then drilled around, did things to the infection, and put a temporary tooth on.  They explained to me that the infection needed to go away before they could do the next step, so I walked out with prescriptions for codeine and antibiotics.  Let me tell you, that codeine has come in handy.

The next step was on Wednesday, and for the entire procedure I felt like I was suddenly in a scifi movie.  They popped off the temporary tooth and drilled around some more.  Then they informed me that today they were putting in the post and the cap, taking the molds for the new tooth, and then putting on another temporary tooth.  Post? I thought.  What the heck is a post? The next thing I know, the dentist is shoving a metal rod into my jaw.  He pauses for a moment, and the rod is literally extending from my upper jaw all the way down to my lower lip.  My immediate thought?  Haha, Ah’m a vahmpiiiire! Then they pulled it back out, put another one in, and it was suddenly miraculously tooth-length.  Then suddenly I hear the dentist asking the hygeniest  for the torch.  Say what now?! Yup, she had a torch that glowed blue flame, and he placed the tip of one of his tools into it and proceeded to burn part of my gum/teeth.  I was truly horrified/terrified and wide awake.  Also the smell of your own skin burning off at high temperatures is one I doubt I will ever forget.  At around this point in time they took the mold for my new tooth.  The gunk in the mold reminded me remarkably of what I’ve always imagined biting into flesh would taste like.  Haha, now I’m a zombie. Braiiiins I thought.  Then the dentist got this thing that looked like a glue gun, but actually shot out tooth-colored putty.  He applied this to my tooth area, and then the hygeniest used a laser–ya, a motherfucking LASER–to solidify it into my new temporary tooth.  Then the dentist checked the color of my teeth against a chart for the color of my new tooth.  He sweetly informed me that it’s going to be very awesome and ready in 2.5 to 3 weeks.

All I could think while I was walking out of the office was that my mouth now has a metal rod in it, and lasers were used on me, and when my new tooth comes in, I’m totally gonna be part cyborg.