Day 11: The Dentist

The entire day wasn't actually about the dentist, but in my head it was. I was nervous and feeling worried about what was going to have to happen to my tooth, and also how much it was going to cost. When I finally sat down in the chair, Dr. Dave looked in my mouth and said "Well, will you look at that?!? Wow!" And then we took a terrifying picture of it ("This oughta do it for the insurance company," he said as he viewed it. "It looks awful. Much worse than it really is.") and talked about my options. He said that normally he'd put a crown on a tooth like that, but since it's not a tooth I use (it's a wisdom tooth and doesn't line up with any of my other teeth), we can try just putting a big filling over the places where it's exposed, and that should do it, at least until I am ready for a crown or want to have it removed.

So you don't want to extract it," I quavered, afraid to give him any ideas.

"Oh, gosh, no, I don't want to pull it.  I wouldn't do that to you," he said.  One of the many reasons why we all love Dr. Dave.

As I was making my appointment, I was chatting with the receptionist and said that I get a little shaky for things like this, so I was going to make toph come and hold my hand. "Oh, no problem," she chirped. "Since someone is driving you, just have Dr. Dave call you in some Valium. Takes the edge right off!" One of the other reasons to love Dr. Dave!

So next week I'll go back, take a Valium, get numbed up, and he'll drill a bit and then patch this thing up.  He said if it's not hurting, it probably won't, and that this was likely inevitable from the size of the filling in it. (Which was put in in 2003. We were both amazed it was that long ago!)

The rest of the day was fretting about the baby (who is totally recovered from his tummy bug, but if he made a funny sound I was on alert!) and fretting about the appointment, and then recovering from not needing to fret anymore.


Dinner:

Pho Van:
Salad rolls, a garlic chicken wing, pork and shrimp rice noodle bowl, and some carmelized garlic pork and green beans that were astonishing. I could have eaten pounds of it. As it was, I let toph demolish it and kept things reasonable. Overall, delicious. And watching Jasper play with chopsticks was a hoot.