Dental Happiness

I should emphasize that the title of this entry is dental "happiness", not dental "bliss". At this point, it seems doubtful that I'll have dental bliss in my life ever again - not that it's clear I've ever had it.

So I have a new dentist, and went to see him for the first time yesterday. I had been going to a dental group elsewhere in the area two years ago, but stopped going because their billing department was clueless about how to handle insurance claims, and I wasn't wild about the dentists' demeanor, or their handling of the two crowns they put in my mouth. I decided I could do better. But of course one never is really motivated to find a new dentist, so it took me a while. As with many other things, my new one was recommended by my friend and ex-boss Genevieve (who regrettably has moved out of the area; I miss her already).

My dental history is a little weird. As a young child my parents took me to a dentist I recall having a horrible opinion of, and eventually they switched to a different dentist, who was excellent. Nonetheless, it was hard to get me to brush (never mind floss) regularly, and I ended up with quite a few cavities. (My sister ended up with the braces. I'm not sure which of us was worse off.) As an adult, I've turned things around (mostly) and my fillings since age 18 have mostly involved replacing old, decaying fillings. Which isn't the worst thing.

About ten years ago I was diagnosed with a temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disorder, which came because I clench and grind my teeth when I sleep. Besides wearing a groove into my bottom front teeth, my jaw got slightly mis-aligned and this caused the cartilage between my jawbone and my skill to distort slightly, leading to clicking sounds when I opened and closed my mouth, and once or twice having my jaw lock up (this is not good). I now wear a mouth brace at night, which has seemingly cured all of these problems.

About five years ago I started having trouble eating hot and cold food and drinks. My dentist in Madison diagnosed me as having scraped off the enamel on the sides of my teeth due to brushing too hard and too long. I had bee using an Oral-B medium brush, which he said was way, way too stiff a brush. He switched me to a Butler GUM soft brush, which I've been using since (though my new dentist gave me a Reach extra-soft brush, which feels even softer). I also now use Sensodyne toothpaste for sensitive teeth, which deadens the nerves in the teeth to alleviate the hot/cold problem. So that problem, too, has apparently been handled.

My new dentist - who I like quite a bit from the first experience - did something no dentist has done to me before: Measured the recession of my gums. I'd been diagnosed with somewhat receded gums before, but that dentist said my teeth didn't show additional decay because of it so it looked okay. My new dentist says that receded gums can also indicate a deterioration of the bone structures which support the teeth, so it's something to be monitored. He conjectured that my recession might also have been due to overaggressive brushing and might have been stalled as a result of switching to a softer brush. But of course he can't be sure without doing several measurements over time. So, we'll see.

Lastly, my previous dentist, as I said, installed two crowns in my mouth, one of them a veneer which caps one of my top front teeth (which had gotten badly chipped, probably because of my lifelong bad habit of biting my nails, which I'm currently trying to cure or reduce by having bought a nail clipper). I've mostly gotten used to them, but it's still kind of weird. I'm only 33, surely I shouldn't have any crowns yet! I'm kind of dubious that I really needed them, and wonder if I should have argued harder against them at the time (I can be a wuss about such things; it's one of my characteristics I like the least in myself). But there's no use in worrying about it now. The cards have already been dealt.

So I got some new X-rays taken, and got half my teeth cleaned, and will get the other half cleaned in two weeks. The dentist will look at the X-rays and let me know what he finds. I'm cautiously optimistic that all is basically well, but we'll find out.

The dentist's office is in a little office building and feels very "high tech", with ultra-contemporary furniture and lots of exterior light. Quite a change from my teenage dentist whose office was in the heavily-renovated basement of his parents' house. Diff'rent strokes I guess.

Now I just need to find a primary care physician and make an appointment for a physical. It's been about six years, and I suspect I've made good progress in getting in better shape and health since then, but it's time to run some tests and do the numbers.

On the way to the dentist's office I drove through downtown Los Altos, which I've driven past often, but never through. It's a very impressive and pleasant downtown area, and I'd like to go check it out soon, do some window shopping and see what there is to see.

Well, I didn't get many mentions in peoples' JournalCon entries (I guess I wasn't all that memorable), although my own entry about it has gotten many hundreds of hits in the few days since I wrote it. That's pretty impressive.

The entries I've written since have not gotten many hits, so it looks like I haven't really picked up many new readers. Ah, well.

I just thought I'd whine about that for a moment.

Much to my surprise, the Giants have taken a 2-0 lead in the American League Championship Series. Cardinals starter Matt Morris completely imploded in Game 1, and though Kirk Reuter wasn't dominant, it hardly mattered. Tonight, Jason Schmidt was absolutely dominating for the Giants, at times seemingly just throwing fastball after fastball and saying, "Hit this!", while Rich Aurilia touched up Woody Williams for a pair of home runs.

The highlight of tonight's game was watching Ramon Martinez lay down a suicide squeeze bunt with JT Snow on third base in the top of the ninth inning to get the Giants' fourth run for insurance. It was perfectly executed and Snow scored easily. That might be the first suicide squeeze play I've ever seen in a ballgame, even on TV. (Aurilia said it's the first time he ever saw the Giants lay one down.)

So the Giants are returning to San Francisco with a 2-game lead in the best-of-seven series. They've got to like their chances to win 2 of the remaining 5 games. Barry Bonds has not been a big factor in this series (yet), but it's looking quite likely that he'll finally make it to the World Series.

Meanwhile, the Angels and Twins are tied 1-1 in their series (apparently Ron Gardenhire has illusions that Rick Reed is a big game pitcher). I haven't watched much of that series yet. I'm kind of pulling for the Angels just because of their history of futility and so that we can have the Giants/Angels all-Wild Card World Series. That would be wacky.

Mmmm, baseball.