I Hate My Teeth

Bitch Week continues. This entry (and tomorrow's) are being written retrospectively, but are timely otherwise.

So I've had pretty rotten teeth all my life. Now, I don't know objectively how rotten; I've never had any teeth pulled (yup, still have all my wisdom teeth), and I've never had a root canal. But I've had cavities all my life, and other than a span in my late 20s when I didn't have any work done (despite not getting regular dental check-ups during it), I've been getting old silver fillings replaced and a few new fillings inserted lately.

I fully realize that much of the problem is that I didn't brush and floss regularly as a kid. It's one of those "if I knew then what I know now" things. At the time I was happy I didn't need braces. In retrospect, I'd rather have had the braces. It couldn't have been worse than being called "Clark Kent" for a month or two when I first got glasses in seventh grade.

My other problems with my teeth are twofold: First, I've had a grinding problem with my jaw, and have worn a night brace since about 1993 to stave off temporomandibular joint disorder (it works, by the way). Second, I've been a lifelong nail-biter. Consequently, I have some grooves in my front biting teeth, which although they don't hurt are about as exciting as you might imagine.

Last weekend I found myself probing my lower front teeth with my tongue more often, and found that one of them was getting sore. I figured it was due to my probing (the cause of which I still don't know), so I tried to stop. I ended up probing the tooth next to it - they're both my bottom frontmost teeth. So the first tooth got better, and then the second tooth started to hurt.

Then something new happened: Recall the grooves in the teeth. This means that there's a front "hump" and a back "hump" on either side of the grooves of the teeth. I started feeling the front hump moving up and down. So I was terribly afraid that the tooth had split down the middle and that the front piece was only being held in place by the gum - a very deep split, apparently. I called the dentist last night and told them I wanted to come in ASAP to have it looked at.

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night, felt the front bump sliding down away from the back bump, and had a huge panic attack. I broke out in a sweat, lay on the floor trying to get over it (and not sweat all over the sheets of the bed), had to go to the bathroom, and apparently passed out halfway there, as I found myself on the floor just outside the bathroom. (Debbi thought I was having an anxiety dream, not a full on panic attack, and didn't hear me fall on the carpet; she was sound asleep, and I didn't weak her up, being not entirely awake or rational myself.) I eventually decided the front part of the tooth wasn't in imminent danger of falling out (I was afraid it would come out at night and I'd swallow it, thus deep-sixing any chance of having it reattached), so I calmed down and went back to sleep.

In the morning I made an appointment with the dentist for the afternoon.

Now here's the strange part: I went in to the dentist in the afternoon, and he poked and prodded at my teeth. He said that the teeth were all firmly placed in the gums, not wobbling around (very good). He also said he couldn't find any sign of a major fracture in the tooth. He said he saw "microfractures" in the enamel in front, but that these are actually quite common and not really a danger to the structural integrity of the tooth (well, at least I think they're not; maybe he only implied the latter). He did decide to add some filling substance to cement the groove on top of that tooth, so it's nice and smooth now. And that was that; back to work I went.

This was very strange. I'm sure I felt part of the tooth moving, sliding away from my tongue, and that I felt it in the gum area as well as with my tongue. My dentist didn't have an explanation for my tongue sensation (probably just my imagination or a misinterpretation of the sensation), but he said that the teeth don't actually rest on the jaw but have (I think) a tendon between them and the jaw, and that sometimes a jarring experience on a tooth (such as biting an object which is unexpectedly hard) can cause phantom sensations that the tooth is moving.

I'm aware that things I feel in my body can often not be directly correlated with what I think they actually mean, but this felt so clear-cut that it's really quite a shock (although a pleasant one!) to know that whatever I was feeling did not reflect reality.

Thank goodness.

As I get older, I think a little more each year about the rest of my life, how my life will be when I'm 50, or 60, or 70. Will the tech industry still exist in anything like its present form when I'm 50? What will I be doing when I'm 60? What shape will my body be in when I'm 70? I despair that my teeth with be in good shape in 33 years, although I do brush twice a day and floss nearly every day, go to the dentist twice a year, and now am more motivated than ever to stop biting my nails. Still, 33 years is a long time, and look how crappy my teeth have become in the last 30 years.

Makes me think maybe I don't want to live to be 80 (and my family history suggests I have a good shot at it, and could even see 90).

Life maintenance is a real drag, sometimes.