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end of a bad smell in my mouth
Tuesday, July 19 2016
Gretchen had told me that I had a appointment at the dentist this morning at 10pm, and I believed her. [REDACTED] But when I got to the dentist in West Hurley, the woman casting glances around the waiting room said that I was scheduled for tomorrow, not today. Huh? (It later turned out she was right.) But since I was there, what the hell, she said she could do me immediately. That very woman took me to one of the rooms and, in her apparent role as dental hygienist, proceeded to clean my teeth in the usual way (that is, a way that occasionally caused me to squirm in pain as she, every so often, hooked my gums too deeply). I warned her beforehand about my floppy "punk rock tooth," which, I said, had seemed to come loose in its socket. She took an xray of it and thought she identified an infection in its root. Hmm, that would account for the unpleasant fragrances that come from massaging the adjacent gum. Later, thought, the dentist was pulled in to have a look at the situation. By this point the dental hygienist thought perhaps the thing that was loose was just the crown, not the entire tooth. But how could that be? When a crown is loose, it just falls off, right? The dentist cleared up the entire mystery when he arrived. In a single fluid motion, he yanked my tooth from my mouth. At first I'd thought he pulled out the entire thing, that is, an intact tooth that included all of the root that hadn't dissolved away when the tooth was abscessed (circa 1998). But when I saw it, it looked like just a crown, complete with a little flexible tail. Then I remembered that when the dentist had put it in, he'd used a "new" carbon fibre technology to pin it in the center (instead of the standard stainless steel rod). Evidently that fibre had slipped out enough to permit the tooth to flop around. The dentist asked me about how long the tooth had been loose and I said "maybe three months" (later I realized the correct answer was closer to four). He was appalled, saying I should always immediately go to a dentist when I have a loose tooth. Otherwise "it will rot." Indeed, rot is the only real accounting for the smells I'd been getting from that tooth before I somehow convinced myself to no longer sniff my finger after touching it (or the surrounding gum). Nevertheless, I could still occasionally catch whiffs of it, particularly when the tooth moved while eating. This would evidently inject a burst of rot fragrance into my mouth which would the travel up through the back of my nasal cavity and nto my nose. I could never smell these smells when I exhaled into my hands, which suggested that fragrances inside the mouth pushed up into the naval cavity from the back are much more intense than those picked up by the nostrils, and this (in turn) probably accounts for flavor differences in food. Meanwhile, the dentist had reglued my crown onto my stump after a minimum (or, even, perhaps, a near-absence) of cleaning. I hoped that the dental adhesive contained something to kill all that nasty bacteria that had taken up residence on the exposed surfaces of my tooth-stump. In any case I could still smell traces of that tooth root smell for hours after my dental appointment, though it gradually faded away. Gone too was the metallic (or even, perhaps, mildly galvanic) flavor that had been coming from beneath that crown. It was now firm against the gum, and if there was any nasty bacterial action, it was sealed away beneath dental adhesive.
Why hadn't I come to the dentist sooner with this problem? I'd assumed the loose tooth was a major problem, one that would require a dental implant to fix. I hadn't considered how a flexible anchoring cable might make loose crown simulate a loose tooth.
I feel jubilant as I left that dental appointment. My flopping-tooth problem had been solved without any real expense, and so too had the associated bacteriological issues, which had subtly drained me of self-confidence and a feeling of perfect well-being. My next stop was supposedly to be a the brick mansion in Kingston, but I'd forgot the landlord keys, so I forced to drive home via Dug Hill Road. The task at the brick mansion was to install hardware in the refrigerator to secure bottles and such placed on the shelves in its doors. Originally I'd planned to improvise this hardware, but I'd found a supplier online who could ship replacements for cheaper than I could imperfectly fabricate them. Unfortunately, my first order resulted in left-hand rail holders that were smaller than the right-hand ones, and so I'd had to order more pieces. These were all too cheap to ship back, but in total all the pieces I'd bought before I had what I needed came to $80. That's a lot to spend on a 14 year old refrigerator. I showed up at the brick mansion, let myself into 1L, and proceeded to install the new hardware. Nothing is easy in this world, so of course I had to cut the rails to make them fit this particular refrigerator door. The tenant's geriatric Chihuahua barked at me the whole time, even though I'd cleaned up its turds in the bathroom. I tried to reach out to the little dog in hopes of befriending it, but it seemed like it would've preferred to bite me than be pet by me, so I withdrew. I only managed to fit rails in two of the refrigerator door's three places for them; the space for the bottom-most rail was completely occupied by pull-drawers.
Our somewhat-crazy housecall vet came to our house this afternoon, mostly to give rabies booster shots to Oscar and Celeste. But Gretchen also had hopes of having a recently-discovered ear infection in Neville examined and also having Clarence's persistent blocked tear duct examined. Neville didn't escape into the forest, so the vet prescribed him an expensive antibiotic. But Clarence had somehow vanished in the time since the vet had arrived, so his tear duct problem (which at this point seems chronic-but-manageable) remains unexamined.
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