Tuesday, July 15, 2008

The Tooth Fairy

I need a tooth fairy. For me that would be someone with really good painkillers that don't make me puke and don't cost much. Or a sugar daddy who'd pay for my dental implants. I've been trying to keep my two bottom molars for the last three or four years, and its a serious battle that I can honestly say started in my childhood with tin-can braces and living in a small town miles from any orthodontist. Then the when tin cans come off, every tooth is decayed underneath. Then I get a mouth full of silver fillings, then a tooth dies here, and the lovely one gets a gold crown. Then finally porcelain crowns. And now momma needs implants.

I've been trying for all this time to keep one good chewing surface, and it's a nasty battle. They start to ache and the pain goes down my jaw and into my neck. They feel higher (and not in a good way) so that when my back teeth touch top to bottom it sends a shiver of pain radiating out into my jaw and down my neck. It gives me a headache nothing will cure. And I hear, this kind of thing could end up killing you. Sadly, I'm one of those people that can't take narcotics without a really good anti-nausea drug on board to prevent the unfortunate puking, as I run for the toilet. Oh, I know it's early to be talking about such things, but there you have it. I'm not feeling good.

My handsome dentist, bless his sweet, pretty, blue eyed self, always keeps up with the latest gadgetry in dental marvels. He has a laser drill, that if I had a cavity, would zap it quietly and painlessly--alas, this is not my problem. This dental saga might have ended differently, if I were rolling in dough, or had started life with a different set of parents. All this might have been avoided. But a lifetime of grinding my porcelain crowns, when I sleep, into cracked and splintered nubs, has left me phobic of the next expensive dental horror I face. I'm told I could solve this whole mess with a mouthful of perfectly lovely dental implants for around $30,000. And that's a whole other kind of nightmare. It'll be that, or some ghastly form of dentures. Oh god, old age is a nightmare.

And then, yesterday, when I went to my doctor for my ten day check of the clotting factor, my blood pressure was 180/104, and my blood was like sludge. It oozed from the finger prick and would not drop. So now I have to take it easy, increase my warfarin (sounds just like me--that warfarin woman) take an antibiotic which rips my gut up, something for the nausea, something for the pain, and go back to bed.

These are the vicissitudes of having lived an exciting and adventurous life. Eventually the piper must be paid. Now, I think I'll take the mornings dose of drugs and go back to bed. Have a lovely day darlings.