Category Archives: dentist

crown, dentist, misc

Miscellaneous Monday

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Q: What do you call someone who has been crowned twice in one month?

A1: Broke.
A2: A dual monarch.
A3: Relieved.

I’ll let you chose the answer you like the best. {*grin*}

Today was a bit chill out here on the plains. It got up to somewhere between 5 and 10 degrees (it all depends on who you believe). Add to that a nice 15 mph breeze and it felt downright chilly. I walked over to the dentist’s at about 2pm and it was breezy and snowing and cold. It never got any better after that. Now tonight it has cleared off and the temperatures are dropping fast, heading towards another subzero night. But the good news is that the forecast for the weekend is for days in the 50’s.

Ran into a former intern of L’s from her past business. The young lady was a Boettcher scholar and has finished her undergraduate degree now. Found out she is working near the university she attended for the nonce until medical school starts in the fall. It is always nice to see someone do well, especially someone who is a daughter of an acquaintance and went to high school here. She won my heart when she was working at the country club one summer at the remote stand. To fill the time between golfers, she had her calculus book and was boning up on definite integrals. Warmed the cockles of my scientist’s heart. She was back in town for her sister’s birthday and just happened to be in for her dental checkup when I was there. My dentist and I think she will be a good doctor. (She was also a classmate of one of my dentist’s daughters.)

According to my dentist, I’m now good for another twenty years or more. I’m just happy that I can open my mouth again and let the air in without a blast of pain. Amazing how much difference in quality of life $10 worth of glue can make.

Time to put my notebook together for tomorrow’s council meeting. We have a number of things to go over, including the approval interview of the new fire chief. Hopefully won’t run too long.

blueviolet, dentist, meme

Week Before Super Bowl Sunday

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A perfectly good title which has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of this post, its all good.

Today was much more typical of winter weather around here. It got up to somewhere around 15 degrees and then stayed windy and snowy all afternoon. It is right now at the border of single digits, but isn’t snowing any more.

Can you guess what this is:

Yes, that is a dental crown. But it is not the one that was just put on (from here and here and here ), this is the  other one from the opposite side that was put on 25+ years ago. Evidently the dental cement from back then is only good for twenty or so years. So this afternoon it decided to come off. I immediately called my dentist at home (told you it was a small town) and he volunteered to come into town (he lives outside of town) and glue it back on, but since it was not too painful, I told him first thing in the morning was fine. No sense in ruining his day with the family. So 8am tomorrow I’ll find out when he has slotted me in and get it repaired. One of the hazards of aging is that things like filings and crowns have finite lifetimes on the order of twenty years, so one gets to get them redone as they reach that certain age. A pain in the … (well, you know where.)

So in honor of it being another day of infamy here, blueviolet has tagged all her readers with the following meme and I respond thusly:

1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? Nope, not per se.

2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED? Last week – smashed index fingernail.

3. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? Since I have been using computers from the 70’s, my handwriting has deteriorated to an illegible scrawl. So the answer is no.

4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? It all depends. Sometimes bologna, sometimes salami, sometimes ham, and sometimes turkey.

5. DO YOU HAVE KIDS? L and I have one son, 18 years old.

6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? Probably.

7. DO YOU USE SARCASM? Never! {*grin*}

8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? No, not for the last 45+ years.

9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? Nope. Big people don’t trust rubber bands.

10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? Rice Chex or Shredded Wheat.

11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? Always. Size 16 feet with high arches don’t slip out of ties shoe.

12. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM? French vanilla or Rocky Road.

13. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE? Size and intellect.

14. RED OR PINK? Neither. Blue or Green.

15. WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? Ego.

16. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? Of the living, L my wife. Of the departed probably my grandfather.

17. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO COMPLETE THIS LIST?? Sure.

18. WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING? Black sweat pants, blue sweat shirt, white socks. No shoes.

19. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? Iron Butterfly’s original 17 minute version of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida  (Click the link to see how fuzzy my memory is.)

20. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? Don’t know for sure. Green maybe?

21. FAVORITE SMELLS? Baking bread, frying bacon, a certain Chanel scent L. used to wear when we were dating.

22. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? My dentist.

23. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO POSTED THIS NOTE? Don’t know. I read her blog, but otherwise don’t know her.

24. FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH? College football of any form.

25. HAIR COLOR? Used to be dark brown to black. Now not so much. Mostly white with a few dark hairs waging a forlorn battle against extinction.

26. EYE COLOR? Blue.

27. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? Used to, but haven’t in years. Now it is bifocals.

28. FAVORITE FOOD? Varies. BBQ smoked sausage, steak, toasted cheese, vegetable soup.

29. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS? Happy endings.

30. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? Dr. Zhivago – one of my all time favorites.

31. WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING? White T.

32. SUMMER OR WINTER? Winter in my youth, summer now that I’m getting older and feel cold all winter.

33. HUGS OR KISSES? Both.

34. FAVORITE DESSERT? Cake, ice cream, or fruit.

35. MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND ? To injustices.

36. LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND ? To blithering idiots.

37. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW? Suite 606.

38. WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? I use a track ball, but it sits on a mentor net mouse pad. Someday I’ll have to write about the somewhat insane young lady I last mentored.

39. WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON TV LAST NIGHT? Nothing.

40. FAVORITE SOUND(S)? 60’s and early 70’s rock and roll.

41. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES? Rolling Stones.

42. WHAT IS THE FARTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME? Russia.

43. DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT? Computer Whispering? Who knows?

44. WHERE WERE YOU BORN? Colorado.

45. WHOSE ANSWERS ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO GETTING BACK? Everyone

46. HOW DID YOU MEET YOUR SPOUSE/SIGNIFICANT OTHER? Sitting in high school biology class as described here .







So my challenge to you is to answer all these questions (if you so desire.)

dentist, medical center, physician, weather

A Potpourri of Nothing

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I have been officially crowned (and of course billed). It is so neat to chew again. Might even be worth all it cost.

I was talking to a colleague as I left the dentists office, and we shared the observation that there are few things that can hurt more from less damage than teeth. He is even older than me (geologic time maybe?) and he has both implants and a bridge. His bridge had started causing problems over the holidays, so he was waiting to get in to see the dentist and hoping that it wasn’t going to be a problem with his anchor teeth.

The whole conversation led me to consider the history of dentistry. What prompted the first person who figured that they could try to do anything other that just remove a hurting tooth? (Go here to see a timeline of dentistry. ) I figure it was either an accident ala “hey, since I stuffed that mud and leaf mix into that hole in my tooth, it doesn’t hurt as bad!” or it was a sadist who wasn’t real good at the concept or maybe just liked to string the pain out. In any case, it ranks right up there with the idea of primitive brain surgery in oddness. I suppose one shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. In the ancient days, people eventually wore their teeth out and starved to death when they couldn’t tear and grind food anymore. At least today there is a fix. I literally cannot imagine what it would have been like to have an impacted tooth prior to about 700 AD when the Chinese write of the first amalgams (“silver paste”).

Onto more breezy subjects. Today was one of those days where the temperature itself wasn’t too bad, but all day long there was a stiff breeze that made it feel down right cool if you stepped out of sheltered areas. I find that harder to handle than days when it is just brutally cold. When it is like this, you look at the thermometer and it says 30+ degrees and then you step outside and out of shelter of the building and … BRRRRR. But at least the day did have some redeeming qualities. I got to use my Christmas present of a new pair of sweat pants for my walk. That was pretty comfy. And the sun was out so that it was not depressing like the other day. Hooray!

Well, time to do my homework for the meeting tomorrow morning. I have a 7:30 breakfast meeting of the physicians recruitment committee at the local regional medical center. We’ve been successful in recruiting physicians for most of our needs except for full time ER doctors. The medical center has used locum tenens physicians to staff the ER for the past while, but the real goal is have regular full time staffing. (For those whose Latin is a bit weak and don’t hang with MD speakers, locum tenens means temporary at this location or place-holder in the sense of lieutenant.) 

We of the committee try to put the community and area forth with all the bells and whistles to aide in recruitment. We usually have representatives from the county government, the city government, the local community college, the Welcome Wagon, the banks and local business, and the local school district. It seems to be a unique approach. We often times get thank you notes from the visiting physicians and their families, thanking us for making it easier to get a feel for the community and noting how unique it was. The whole idea is to get questions answered right at the source. Seems to work well.

Rural areas like this one have several specialties where it is hard to recruit medical personal. Number one is for appropriately trained and certified ER doctors and number two is surgeons. Both are hard to recruit because the successful candidate is going to have to do a wide range of procedures without the nearby presence of specialists in many areas. Modern medical training tends to specialize the med students so finding wide ranging ER docs and meatball surgeons is harder than family practitioners, etc. I suspect with time and the pending nation wide shortage of physicians, the models for rural medical centers may have to change or else medical school curriculum will need to be revised once more.

Back to the football game …

allergy, dentist, writer's challenge

Allergies and Dentists

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The oddball title of today’s post is brought to you by the letter Mama Kat’s writer’s challenge for this week. I actually have chosen to combine both allergies and worst dental experience in one.

I am allergic to three things: certain antibiotics and penicillin, certain dental anesthetics, and ivory soap. Working in order from least severe to most severe, the symptoms all basically come down to headaches and rashes.

The antibiotic allergy provokers include some of the old harsh antibiotics like aureomycin (one of the earliest tetracyclines). I basically break out in a very itchy and red rash whenever I take them. The same is true for penicillin. Because the reaction to penicillin gets worse with each exposure, doctors avoid giving it to me, saving that last exposure before anaphylactic shock develops for something deathly serious. Interestingly enough, I get the same rashy/itchy symptoms from using Ivory Soap. Some ingredient in Ivory triggers the rash and itch. It is not a minor itch either, it is an itch and scratch until you bleed allover itch.

Closer to the point of this tale, some of the old dental anesthetics used to cause me to get severe migraine like headaches as they wore off. Thus, when I was a teenager, I preferred the pain of non-anesthetic drilling and filling to the aftereffects of the anesthetic. Which leads (almost) naturally into my worst dental experience …

I had to get a filling in a tooth. It wasn’t supposed to be very deep carie and the dentist wasn’t concerned that it would be too painful to attempt without anesthetic. This was in the stone age before digital X-rays and other such modern conveniences. X-rays were taken and then sent out for processing (on physical film no less) and often not seen by the dentist for a week or two. In any case, when the dentist started drilling, he found a crack that needed to be drilled and filled as well as the carie. But the crack ran deeper and a lot closer to the nerve than the carie did. So there I am squeezing the arms of the dentist chair and trying to escape into the floor while the poor dentist keeps on working trying to get done so we can get the filling in and the ordeal over.
It was the longest fifteen minutes of my life. I broke the arm of the dental chair into two pieces, but I never moved my head. Such experiences made me a classic dental avoider until I was in my late twenties and the newer anesthetics came into use. It must have been impressive to the dentist. I golf occasionally with the now retired dentist of that experience and he brings it up every time – he remembers the experience vividly.

I actually am pretty happy with my allergies. My mother and brother are both allergic to the novocaine/procaine family of drugs and react strongly to them. When my brother forgot to mention it before a procedure where they deadened the esophagus to run a camera down, they used novocaine and he went into anaphylactic shock and almost died. So I always figure I got off in good shape with simple to itch to distraction and abrasion.

crown, dentist, numbness

Return of the Dentist

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I write this with a numb half face. You know, the kind of face you get when you’ve been to the dentist and are wondering if you’ll ever feel your tongue and cheek again. Today was the preparation for the crown to replace the tooth a I broke back a while ago (Described here and here and here.). Now all I have to do is live with the temporary cap for the next month (until January 5th) as the crown is made and the Holidays pass. If it is like past occurrences, the temporary will last about 2 weeks and then I’ll have to have a new one put on. My bite tends to grind holes in the hollow temporaries.

We finally got a tiny skiff of the snow that raged around us over the weekend. Not enough of a trace to even tell whether it was snow or just the hoar frost blowing into the cracks. As I walked to the dentist’s office this morning I was debating with myself whether it was snow of the hoar frost. There wasn’t much in any case. The dental nurse said that there was more to the east and west of us and that it was definitely snow. Typical for the valley we live in here. As my wife got ready to return to the mountains yesterday afternoon, we kept an eye on the road reports since some of the interstate route closed briefly due to the snow and ice in the mountains. She got back to the mountains in good shape and reported they had 2-3 feet of new snow. We are still awaiting our first real snow out here on the plains. If it wasn’t for the fact that the farmers need the moisture, I could be happy that it hasn’t snowed yet.

Well, off to return phone calls and get the reports done for tonight’s Boy Scout Committee meeting. Hopefully my face will have returned to normal by then. Right now the front and lower lip is still numb enough it is hard to even drink my morning coffee. What a disaster – a morning without coffee!