Teeth

Teeth are weird.  Especially my teeth. I started losing my baby teeth when I was four.  By the end of third grade I had a full set of braces, complete with headgear, which, thankfully, I only had to wear at night.  The braces lasted until fifth grade, and then I got to wear a retainer for a while (1 year?) and a permanent retainer cemented to my bottom front teeth.  I haven't been able to eat a sandwich decently since.

A few years went by, and my teeth stayed okay.  It seemed like I had a new cavity every check-up.  At some point my wisdom teeth came in, probably when I was too young for them.

My freshman year of college I had a nasty cavity in a wisdom tooth and we decided to get them all taken out.  During the process, one of the roots broke off in my gums and the dentist had to dig around to get all the pieces.  I had some pretty gnarly roots on those babies!

Before I got married I had an appointment to go get some fillings done (or re-done), but the power went out at the dental office and they couldn't reschedule until after the wedding.  I didn't have dental insurance at that point, so I figured I'd have to be okay.

And I was for a long time.  Until I started having some major sensitivity issues accompanied with pain and decided it was time to get things checked out.  One root canal later I was feeling much better.  I still needed some more work, but we moved to Wyoming, and then to Texas, and it kept getting pushed off until another day.

Monday was that day.  I was in pain and had been swollen on the side of my face for a few days.  They gave me the bad news about more root canals, and sent me to an endodontist.  He was pretty cool, and explained that my previous root canal was failing, hence the pain and swelling, and that I needed some work on two other teeth.  I wasn't surprised, because I have a tendency to put off visits with medical professionals until something hurts.

Once the endo started to fix the old root canal he discovered that I have an extra canal in one of the roots, but he wasn't able to get into it yet.  So here I sit, with a half-finished root canal for two weeks, eating "old people food"  and trying to not chew on the right side of my mouth.  I bought some soup and pudding, and have been making smoothies.

I don't know why my teeth are so much drama, but I still have all of them, and I'm very thankful for that, plus an excellent endodontist who doesn't judge me, and explains what they will be doing in detail.  I love knowing what's going on. 

I get to go back soon for the rest of my root canal fix, then start working on the others.  Hopefully my children have better teeth than their mother!