At the time, it seemed like awful news.
You will recall the incident a half year back wherein truth No. 8, the front upper right incisor, came loose and eventually dropped out. My dental experts struggled to discover why it, the crown topping my oldest root canal, had lost its staying power.
After a few x-rays and some poking around in the nerve-less root, the decision was made to cement that chopper right back into my head.
Fast-forward to a couple of weeks ago… I arrived for my checkup/cleaning appointment, and mentioned that the gum of that problematic tooth still felt different, like it did when things first started going loose. What is more, I added, in my upper left gum, somewhere around tooth No. 13 or No.14, a little bump would occasionally form, which went away if pushed hard with a finger.
My dentist’s face clouded. Tell you what, she said, before any checkup or cleaning, let’s update your records with a full set of x-rays. I put on the lead apron and, a few high-energy exposures later, she and I perused the ghostly record of my choppers.
And there it was: the root of No. 8 showed a dark diagonal line. This was the fracture suspected, but not found six months ago. It was good to know why the tooth came out. It was not so good to learn what was required to fix this situation.
I will be receiving my second dental implant. They will crack the root out of my jaw, sew up the gum, and let things heal for a couple of months. Then they’ll open things up again, drill a tiny hole in the bone, insert a small screw in that opening, then let it heal again. Finally, my new crown will be affixed to the screw.
The x-rays also showed the cause of that bump in my upper left gum. A dark mass around another old root canal indicated the presence of a sizable abscess. The periodic bumps I experienced were signs of that infection.
After a few years of “no news is good news” at the dentist office, these revelations were disheartening, largely because the cost of my upcoming dental care was pretty much blowing the budget. Suffice to say, a new roof on my house has been postponed.
I allowed myself a small, sincere pity party. But after only a moment, the thought occurred that my tooth discoveries happened the day before a dear friend was starting her first round of chemotherapy, this a few weeks after some serious surgery.
The fact of the matter is, I have not suffered a debilitating injury or disease, am not being driven from my home place by crime or civil unrest, nor am I burying a loved one. For goodness’ sakes, I merely have issues with my teeth, which that can be addressed with relative ease and a reasonable expectation of complete success.
In the grander scheme of things, then, my problems are small. As such, I’m gonna stop complaining, because the news could be much worse.
Pat Grimes, a former South Bay resident, writes from Ypsilanti, Mich. He can be reached at pgwriter@inbox.com