You know what feels really good? Not having a tooth wobbling loose in the front of your mouth.
I’ve had some dental trauma in my life. One tooth was knocked out during a backyard hockey game in my early teens. A year or two later, another was yanked out by a clothesline while falling off of a friend’s porch roof. And yes, the porch belonged to the same friend whose hockey stick had taken out the first tooth. Then about twelve years ago a bike accident broke off both of the previously damaged teeth along with a third, previously uninvolved tooth. I wound up getting all three of them capped at the U of M Dental School.
And on Saturday, I noticed that one of the capped teeth felt a bit flexible.
It wasn’t flopping around or anything. It just seemed to have a little bit of give when I bit into things. And if I kind of sucked on it, I could feel a bit of pressure around the gum-line. It was subtle, and had probably been building up for a couple of weeks, contributing to a sort of low-level crankiness.
Early last week, I’d made a dentist appointment for today. The plan had been for just a routine cleaning and checkup, but they cheerfully jettisoned that in favor of fixing the loose cap. There was some early concern that the tooth was loose because of a cracked root or a fracture within the cap itself, either of which would have been painful and/or expensive to deal with. But the dentist was able to quickly verify that the tooth was loose “The Good Way.” This meant that it could simply be pulled off, it and my tooth cleaned up, and then the whole thing reassembled with a new post and some new glue.
All very quick, and all very painless. I’ve got a follow-up appointment in three weeks to do the cleaning that was skipped this time. If that goes half as well, I’ll post his contact info here as a bit of free advertising.