{"id":562,"date":"2009-03-09T20:51:03","date_gmt":"2009-03-09T20:51:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/?p=562"},"modified":"2009-03-09T21:03:05","modified_gmt":"2009-03-09T21:03:05","slug":"dental-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/09\/dental-disaster\/","title":{"rendered":"Dental Disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

As some of you know, my teeth are not my strongest feature. I’ve been working with our wonderful dentist, Dr. Z, for nearly 20 years. I have had tons of work done – basically the entire menu of dental services. Root canals, various abscesses, braces, multiple crowns…. I was pretty sure that I had managed to have every dental procedure possible, except dentures.<\/p>\n

That is, until Saturday….. <\/p>\n

Let me tell you about Saturday. Will and I had gotten sandwiches at the local deli. I had chosen my favorite sandwich – a baguette with chicken, cheese, tomato and cucumber. The baguettes are often crispy and chewy, as one would like a baguette. We were eating along and I was nearly finished with my sandwich when I felt something odd on my teeth. I thought perhaps something had gotten stuck there, but it didn’t feel quite like that.<\/p>\n

So I did what any normal person would do. I turned to Will and said, “Is there something on my tooth?”<\/p>\n

Will looked up and quickly said “It’s gone!”<\/p>\n

I replied “Okay then,” and continued chewing my bite.<\/p>\n

Will quickly countered with “No, your tooth — it’s GONE!”<\/p>\n

My tooth, one off to the right from center, had fallen clean out of my mouth. (That’s the #7 tooth to budding students of dentistry.) \"Missing<\/a><\/p>\n

Now, you might ask how this is possible. Well, a combination of a generally weaker root system for that particular tooth, a root canal some 14 years ago, a full crown and a tough sandwich all conspired to just snap the little guy right off and out of my mouth.<\/p>\n

I’ll admit it – I panicked. God love Dr. Z, who had given me his mobile number in the US. I looked at the time and calculated that it was 7am CST. I talked myself into believing that Dr. Z is an early riser, and I called him straight away.<\/p>\n

It took a few minutes, but Dr. Z got me calm, organized and sorted on what needed to be done. I saved the broken off tooth with its crown — so it could be used again. I was all set for a “post and core” procedure and a “re-cement of the crown.” I wouldn’t need a root canal, since one had already been done. The previous root canal also meant that I shouldn’t have any pain. My challenge now was to find a dentist in Dublin that I could trust.<\/p>\n

Luckily, a good friend at work, who is a native Dubliner, found me a recommended dentist not far from our house. I called Dr. O’B on Saturday, but I didn’t expect to hear from her office until Monday. I spent the weekend hiding in the house,<\/a> or keeping my mouth shut the few times I had to leave. Given that Will gave an honest shudder the first time he got a good look at me, I didn’t want to expose too many to my visage. (After that first shudder, he would titter or giggle a little almost every time I smiled.)<\/p>\n

Monday morning, I called Dr. O’B and I was able to schedule a consultation. Will walked me to Grafton Street for my 9:45 appointment. Dr. O’B did exactly what Dr. Z said she would. She cleaned out the crown, fitted a post into the crown and into my upper jaw. Some cement later, my tooth was right back where it belonged. By 10:30 I was back in business.<\/p>\n

It was quite the adventure, but in the end, I was pretty lucky. I had no pain at all and it was a quick and easy fix at the dentist. It could have been much, much worse.<\/p>\n

Over the weekend, Will and I considered how difficult it might be to deal with such a crisis in a country where English is not commonly spoken. Or where we didn’t trust the dental professionals. Ireland can be an alien culture to us from time to time, but in a pinch, we feel pretty comfortable here.<\/p>\n

(Thanks to Sketchory and monstro for their Creative Commons<\/a> contributions, which made the illustrations possible.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As some of you know, my teeth are not my strongest feature. I’ve been working with our wonderful dentist, Dr. Z, for nearly 20 years. I have had tons of work done – basically the entire menu of dental services. Root canals, various abscesses, braces, multiple crowns…. I was pretty sure that I had managed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,5],"tags":[481,759,482],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":567,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562\/revisions\/567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}