Showing posts with label teeth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teeth. Show all posts

Monday, April 12, 2010

More Remodeling Jobs

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I am finally coming out of the closest, the dental closet. There are so many judgments associated with dental care and heaven knows I have been a finger pointer myself. Assumptions are made that poor dental hygiene is associated with lack of pride, intelligence, or money.

For a long time as in many decades, I have been a staunch flosser and brusher. With two dental insurances, I visited my dentist every three months for cleaning. I should have been Godfather to her three kids. I put at least two of them through private schools until they went to college. If I had not left California, there would have been contributions to that also. 

When I was a kid, I used to drink milk by the udder load. People used to joke that I would never have bone or teeth problems, because I was calcium saturated. People with osteoporosis wanted to lick me. Knock on wood, I never had a broken bone.

All of that calcium, all of the thousands of dollars handed over to dentists, all of the landfill I have contributed to with worn out toothbrushes manual and electric in addition to miles of dental floss, cannot stop heredity. After looking at the full mouth scan, the surgeon asked about family oral history. What a sad tale that was to tell. He confirmed the nightmare that plagued me for years. My genes are not designer labels. Regardless of how I treated my teeth and gums, they have generations of dysfunctional fall out. Flossing be damned, they want to leave me. After trying regular floss, mint flavored, cinnamon coated, nothing I did apparently made them happy. They still are insistent on leaving. I am having the ultimate abandonment issues.  

The wisdom teeth have been long gone. Common thought was that when they became infected whip those puppies out of there, no loss. But now, all of my top teeth are tottering on the brink of disaster. This could lead to Prozac or therapy or both. 

After spending hours at the dental surgeon's office, where two dentists patrolled my mouth like a vice squad looking for terrorists, the options were presented to me. Choice one - do this or pay the same for a Rolls Royce. Choice two - as affordable as a Mercedes Benz. Choice three - wear a surgical mask all of the time and tell people you have really bad allergies so your mouth is never visible to the public. 

The good news is that with healing times, the whole process will take a little over a year to complete. Hence, the payments are spread out of that time also. Wipe the sweat from my brow. I thought I was going to have to sell my body to pay for this, in which case, I could afford that surgical mask. 

Never being comfortable with discussing dental care in public, all of my dental concerns were neatly boxed, wrapped tightly and stored in the dark, back recesses of the closet. Now it time to rip that closet door open to come to grips with those finger pointing at me. So, if we cannot get to Nice or any other place nice, well what can I say other than bite me.

Now if you will excuse me, I am going to Google the contact info for the Tooth Fairy. Hopefully, Julie Andrews is not too busy for me.
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Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Life Musings

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It has felt like there has not been much happening, yet it is not true when I reflect back. Besides working diligently on trying to get my book finished, little things change daily causing me to edit and rewrite what I have already written. When I called the Dohany Synagogue for a guest, the number I had was changed. When I called the new number offered, that was disconnected. Finally, I had to track down the new-new number. Ron and I were invited to a US Embassy reception, hosted by the Regional English Language Officer. We went for a relatively short time. The room was suffocatingly hot and although many were from IATEFL, I knew few of them. We did meet the new English Language Fellow (ELF), who is working with Roma college students and their English skills. It made me wonder if I could get any of my students to volunteer time to assist them as well. Something to ponder. It would intertwine nicely with my Race and Ethnicity class. It they had turned on the A/C, which they do have in the building, we may has stayed longer. After interviewing a medical tourism company run by an American-Hungarian M.D., I have decided to have laser surgery for vision correction. Later this month, I will go for a two hour exam to determine if I am eligible and if so, will have the surgery the next day. The surgery takes 15-20 minutes, but they tell you to block out two hours. Once the surgery is over, my next medical project is an evaluation of my teeth. My whole mouth has been non-stop annoying pain, sometimes throbbing, while other times just painful enough to make me aware of it. Our regular dentist is great, but he is not a cosmetic dentist. Both he and my dentist from CA both muse that even if I am a model patient who flosses abundantly and brushes as prescribed, I am the victim of three generations of really poor teeth genes. Fortunately, Hungary is known for its dentistry, with substantially reduced cost. That is life in the big city for now.

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