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Dental benefits

Yesterday I went to have my two permanent crowns fitted. Teeth 14 and 15 apparently. Or was that 15 and 16? Up on the back at the left, anyway. The prep work for them was done two weeks ago and I've been putting up with the temporary crowns since then.

The first step was to have the temporary crowns removed. The nice little technician, completely covered in plastic got out her tongs and started to pull. They didn't budge. She pulled harder. It hurt, but still the crowns wouldn't come out. She tried to loosen them at the base with a pick. No luck. So she went away and came back with what appeared to be a tooth-crowbar. Pry, pry, pull, pull. Nothing. And my teeth were hurting more and more. Eventually she resorted to the hammer-and-chisel approach, tapping the crowbar with some other instrument. Bash-"ow", bash-"ow", bash-"ow". After several minutes of this the temporary crowns popped off.

Then she needed to remove the traces of the glue holding the crowns in place. The back tooth, however, has been ground down very close to the nerve and every touch hurt. So she called the hygienist to come and inject some anesthetic. The first thing the hygienist did was swab the area with some solution, presumably to sterilize the area where the injection would go. And I jumped out the chair with the sudden very sharp pain the solution caused. It was as if she had swabbed the tooth with sulphuric acid. She apologized and sucked the stuff out as best she could, but the pain didn't stop until she'd made the injection.

Then it was fine. The sweet little technician proceeded to spend 20 minutes scraping away glue and buffing and grinding until she was satisfied. And I didn't feel a thing.

At last cute, cute, cute Dr. Jason came in. He was dressed in casual clothes - dockers and a sweater. I, of course, was lying flat in the dentist's chair so my head was exactly level with his crotch. And, my, what a lovely crotch it was; the way he so nicely filled his trousers there made any last vetiges of discomfort disappear. Dr. Jason gave every appearance of being very nicely hung and maybe even a little bit aroused and I spent the next few minutes fantasizing about our lovely future together.

He proceeded to test fit the new crowns. And he was concerned. They fit beautifully, he said, but he wanted me to see something. So the mirror was fetched and he showed me one spot where the porcelain on the crown didn't quite come down to the gum line. He recommended sending it back to have some more porcelain added. He would if they were his, he said. They might be able to have it done before the end of the day. Dr. Jason is so cute that I'm quite willing to do anything he suggests, so I agreed.

Before sending the crowns back, he decided to take an impression of the bite with the new crowns in place. So the technician prepared her tray of gup and put it in my mouth for me to bite down hard on for two minutes and fifteen seconds. Then she pried the now-set gup off and checked to see if it was satisfactory She seemed concerned and started looking into my mouth with her mirror and probe. It turned out that one of the crowns had disappeared!

I promised I hadn't swallowed it. The impression was examined, the floor was searched, my mouth was inspected a few more times. But no crown could be found. So Dr. Jason was called back in. And I had another chance to inspect his package. He looked. Still no crown. I insisted I hadn't swallowed it. He said, "Well, if you have, it will show up in your poop.". Yes, he used the word "poop".

Eventually it was decided that two new crowns would have to be made. So a new impression was called for. And Dr. Jason stayed there while the gup set. And he fiddled with the earlier impression. And lo, there, buried under the gup, was the crown. All was well.

So I had the temporary crowns glued back in. With a weaker glue this time, the technican assured me. And I was told that if the crowns were going to be ready that day I'd be called to come back in around 5 pm. And I went on my way.

At 5:15 I got a call from the dentist's office, wondering if I was still planning on coming in. "Huh?" I said, "No one called me to say I should come in. I'll make my way there now if you like." Then a couple of minutes later another call. Would it be all right if we rescheduled for Monday, since Dr. Jason needed to go home?

So Monday it is. I'll be putting up with sore teeth until then.

Sistopher still doesn't have his money. I'm despairing of ever getting back what I've lent him. But at least he could give me some Vicodin yesterday.

Dilemma

The weird thing is that he doesn't seem irrational. He fully expects to have $5 million on Monday. Maybe even today.

Miracles of modern medicine

Sistopher did have a vicodin to spare. Four, actually. One of those and a nice dish of spaghetti carbonara for dinner, with asparagus ($1.69 a pound in Safeway!), improved my frame of mind considerably. As did Sis's telling me that 2 of his 3 funds transfers will complete by Monday. He claims he has the wire transfer reference ids.

And I woke up this morning with no toothache. Weird dreams all night long though.

I've decided I will give him the benefit of the doubt until Monday. Don't know what I'll do if the money isn't there. Right now I think the odds are 50:50.

Give me painkillers!

So I was prepped for two crowns this morning. Adjacent molars on the top left. Hot Jason said that it would be much better to do them both than to do one and then come back in a year's time and do the other.

An hour of grinding and scraping ensuing. And of taking molds and impressions and biting down hard and tapping gently.

Now the anesthetic is wearing off and my teeth hurt like fuck. And not just the ones that were ground down. Maybe Sistopher has a Vicodin to spare.

Dessert

Last night I was feeling horribly depressed and tired. So I did what all sensible folk do when they are horribly depressed and tired: I made dessert! I have a fridge full of Meyer lemons and wanted a nice, homely, wintery, comforting baked pudding-y kind of thing. Alas, I have no recipes for any such thing, so I adapted a recipe for baked caramel dumplings. As follows:

Whisk together 1 1/2 cups of flour, the finely grated rind of 1 1/2 Meyer lemons, 1 tsp of baking powder, 1/4 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp salt and 1/2 sugar. Melt 2 Tbs of butter in a measuring cup in the microwave, then whisk in 1 egg and add enough milk to reach the 2/3 cup level. Stir this into the flour mixture to make a thickish batter. Spread the batter in a greased 9-inch square pan (pyrex in my case). Sprinkle 1/2 cup of sugar evenly over the top and scatter the finely grated rind of 1/2 a Meyer lemon over the sugar. Put the juice of 2 Meyer lemons in your measuring cup and add hot water to make a cup. Pour this carefully over the batter in the baking dish. Put in a preheated 350-degree oven and bake for 35 minutes.

That was nice. Before dessert I had a grilled cheese sandwich made with 1-year-old Black Diamond cheddar and Oroweat Winter Wheat bread, a tuna melt on the end slice of the bread and organic baby greens salad with raspberry-hazelnut dressing.

Then I watched Common Ground on Logo and cried.