Dental Dilemma

The other night, while watching TV and eating a snack, I tasted something strange in my mouth. I spit it out and there was an entire front tooth sitting in my hand. Now dear readers, I will go to almost any length to get an interesting story for you, but this, this tooth story, it definitely was not planned.

The next day I took a chance and called my dentist. Yes the office was open! But only for emergencies. I was not in any pain, but one look in the mirror and I knew this was definitely an emergency. The receptionist thought so too and she began the screening process. She ran down a list of possible covid symptoms: headache, fever, coughing, and a few I hadn’t heard of before, like loss of taste and difficulty swallowing. Well, without my tooth, food tasted strange for sure, and every time I tried to swallow, my tongue got caught in the empty space. The receptionist didn’t seem to think that these were covid symptoms and she booked an appointment.

The dental office was empty and eerily quiet; all the doors were closed and people were speaking in hushed voices behind their masks. Nobody laughed at my plight – it was all business. The dentist looked around in my mouth and, while she stuck the broken tooth back in with some crazy glue, she gave me the long-term treatment options: cheap but basic, or the high-end special. Since the high-end choice required several appointments, I went for cheap with only 2 appointments needed. I hoped it wouldn’t be too basic.

The next appointment came all too soon, and I endured an hour and a half of freezing, probing, drilling, more probing, fitting and gluing. Then the dentist brought up another issue: since this was a front tooth, the colour of the new one needed to match the other front tooth. A trip to a denturist was in order. Well I know colour is important when my hairdresser is covering up my unfashionable grey hair. And my decorator friend has often pointed out the different shades of white paint for woodwork. But a tooth? Wasn’t this going overboard?

Besides, the very word “denturist’ conjured up visions of a serial-killing denturist in Nova Scotia. Then, when I called to make an appointment, this one told me that his lab was in his private home, in the basement, on a street I had never heard of. Maybe I would need to take my husband with me as protection. I didn’t want to go from having a broken tooth to being a murder victim. The night before the appointment I had a few bad dreams.

The next day, when Peter was too busy to be a body-guard, I used my GPS to find the denturist’s house. It was Not on a dead-end street in the middle of nowhere. The house had No ghostly creaking porches, no secret turret windows. Instead it appeared to be a family home in a pleasant subdivision. Still cautious, I went around to the side door where there was a dental lab sign. But there was no answer when I knocked. This was my last chance to back out….Finally, I gathered up my courage and opened the door.

The denturist welcomed me with a smile peeking out from behind his mask and some questions about covid symptoms. He didn’t look menacing at all! His lab was sun-filled and the walls were painted a soft grey, maybe antique silver or misty fog. Then the wall behind his work table caught my eye – children’s drawings of cartoons, hearts, unicorns, rainbows, all in shades of pink; created by Mia, Anna and Una. This denturist was a family man!

It only took about ten minutes for the denturist/family man to touch up the paint on my new tooth. And today, after I finish my post to you, I will go and get it cemented in. No headlines, no drama, no dead body, no covid germs; just a new-tooth story with a boring ending. Sorry! I tried my best.

Sue