Rings and Crowns

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If ever there was proof that there is no such thing as a kind and benevolent creator, teeth would be the prime example. Anyone who scoffs at this hasn't ever had an abcessed tooth or possibly finds pleasure in such horrific pain. I once had a tooth go south on me late one night when I was working in the herbarium looking up different specimens and chowing down a pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream with nuts and chocolate. My tooth hit a nut and I hit the ceiling. I spent the rest of the night in some tragicomic attempts, like trying to bathe the tooth in Anbesol by standing on my head only to nearly swallow it and suffocate, to quell the excrutiating pain until morning arrived when I could call my dentist. In the morning, I looked like a chipmunk who stuffed a large golfball into my cheek when I went into work. I got a quick appointment with the endodontist, a.k.a. Dr. Root Canal, and I don't think I've ever before been so happy to see a needle and a drill in the vicinity of my oral cavity in my life.

Over the past week or so I've had similar twinges of pain in another tooth that have been giving me chronic headaches. Of course, being a stranger in a strange land it makes me even less enthused than usual to go visit doctors of any kind, especially the kind that have implements of torture. I haven't been to see a doctor of any kind in 3 or more years and I suppose it is from growing up in a medical household where you had to be coughing up a lung to miss school much less get real medical attention. The cobblers children have no shoes as the old saying goes, but not having the first clue about how to get an appointment or where to go is a real deterrent, not that I went much when I did know who to call. So, Jarkko made a surprise dental appointment this morning that gave me 90 minutes to get there which is likely the only kind I wouldn't wuss out on going to because I didn't have enough time to rationalise an excuse and, after a good poking about and an x-ray, it turned out to be nothing. I'm not sure which is worse; going to the dentist and finding out that you're about to buy him a new Jaguar with the goldmine of cavities he found in your mouth or going to the dentist only to be told that your pain is a mystery. I was happy to skip on out of there in a short time but teeth have a way of getting their revenge come hell or high water. Damn teeth.