I have a mutant tooth! An extra one, just hiding up there in the gums between my canine and an incisor. Like a ninja.
“Promise me that’s going to stay right there,” I begged when Dr. G showed me the x-ray images. I was laughing, but I meant it very sincerely.
“Oh, it will, ” the dentist said, turning back to the x-rays. “I can’t see any reason it wouldn’t. It’s stayed right there this long.”
“I don’t want it just deciding to grow out all snaggle toothy – like, the day before the wedding.”
He chuckled and promised – it’s probably been there my whole life and never moved. Why no one saw it until now is the mystery. He reached for my chart and made some mmm hmmming noises and as he went over my medical history, began to read some of my fill-in-the-blank answers.
“Oh, you’re gonna love this,” he said, motioning to his dental assistant. “That’s funny stuff.”
She read my chart and her nose crinkled up. “You know, I totally agree.”
Under miscellaneous medical information, the new patient questionnaire asked, “What medications are you taking now?” I’d dutifully jotted down the name of birth control prescription I take and then next to it, under “Correlating diagnosis/reason?”
Parenthood is scary.
What wasn’t that scary was my diagnosis: Healthy teeth, healthy gums and really, minus the discovery of my middle age mutant ninja tooth, absolutely nothing of note. Perfection! Nary a cavity or nothin’! I can’t lie - loved hearing all those number ones rattled off during my gum examination. One! One! I felt like a friggin’ champ.
“You make people who follow all the rules look pretty bad.”
I smiled.
“But.” The hygienist put on her mother face. “You should really floss.”
She then delivered a rather stern and terrifying lecture about flossing and bacteria and heart disease and cancer. I listened and promised her I’d try harder. And I will. Once a day, she said, and I can do that. Or, I can try very earnestly to do that and not beat myself up too bad when I fail, because, look, I may have big ole feet, wide hips and skin tone the color of skim milk, but genetics took a little pity and gave me some rockin’ chompers and I’m not going to question the wisdom behind that.
I am so HAPPY for you!
Wow! What an excellent examination. Kudos, girl! (I’ll admit, I’m feeling the envy right now.
lol)
And not for nothing but, your hygienist is correct with the connection with heart disease and cancer. So sad but true.
Just do your best to floss, young lady.
(I personally love the little bristle brush gizmos that move easily between your teeth. Not so much pulling and pressing as with floss.)
Congratulations again. Let’s hear it for the “ones”! WoooHoo!!
I love it. I have often wondered what the appropriate response is for some of that fill in the blank stuff. Now I know.
Oh my goodness, the way you fill out your medical history forms is a riot!
I figure, one after another, they must get a little boring to enter into the computer…
Woohoo, congrats! Excellent news, and sounds like you have a good dentist & hygnist there if they found the humor in your commentary. If they didn’t, it’d definitely be a big red flag…..
Also, there is a DENTAL SEDATION CRUISE ad running next to this post right now. What in the world! There are such things as Dental Sedation Cruises…?
It’s called a supernumerary tooth, and I have a couple of them in my upper jaw, laying perpendicular to my incisors. Extra credit for using words with 1-6 syllables? (I had to use *incisors* to get 3 syllables.)
And don’t worry about flossing. I don’t do it even once a month, and I have perfect gums and zero flossing cavities.
Congrats! I know you were dreading the visit. And it made me realize I miss that old photo you had of yourself because I went to go look on the right hand side- whoops, new design!
You should totally put a pic of your chompers and pretty mug back up on the first page. You are a cutie!
I had an extra tooth, too. Yup, it showed up in grade school along with the permanent teeth. It was right smack in the middle of the roof of my mouth. SO. when I had to have a few other teeth removed because I have a small mouth and, heaven forbid it be crowded in there, they took it out, too. I think I even conned my parents into giving me extra tooth fairy money.
And so the story goes… I learned I was a freak of nature at an early age. Go figure.
I’m the opposite – I was born with a missing tooth. I had my full set of baby teeth but discovered at the age of 15 that I still had a baby tooth because there was no adult tooth to push it out of the way. Unfortunately it started sinking into my gums so they took it out and I have had a false tooth since I was 15 years old!!!
I love flossing. It wasn’t always the case but some Crest Glide, and a new commitment to it made me realize that its like one of those gross/fascinating things that people do and love, like peeling skin, or squeezing zits – neither of which I get into. There is gunk between your teeth! And it has a smell! Which makes your breath bad if you don’t get it out! And I want kisses! So I floss.
“…because parenthood is scary” should be the tagline for a BC ad.
I hate flossing. My ONLY 2011 New Year’s goal was to try to make it a habit (I’m sick of the dirty looks from the dentist; reminds of the Simpson’s, “Why must you turn my office into a house of lies?!”). I’ve gotten better about it, but it still seems like so much work at the end of a long day….
Ha ha! Great.
I have my checkup soon. I got the postcard “reminder” to schedule my appointment. My first thought: MUST FLOSS NOW I’m so bad at it too. I’ve been lucky so far, but I don’t want to push it. Trying to get in the habit again, once a day. I even have a freakin’ reminder on my phone…maybe I should change it to “floss b**ch!” and add a picture of a mouth with gum disease.
I might be in the minority but I love to floss. I do it always once a day if not twice. However, it hasn’t saved me from my share of dental work over the years. Because, believe me, I’ve had it. But I do think it makes my gums happier.
Also, you have ninja teeth and I have ninja roots. My dentist told me once that I have the craziest molar roots he has ever seen. They are hooked and slanted and curvy. I guess we all have our little extra something.
I floss in the shower! I know it sounds ridiculous but it gives me a few more minutes to linger under the hot water (that and you can wash away the gross food particles)
A customer at my work left a tooth on the counter today.
No, no, no, no, no. OMG. Please elaborate. That’s so wretched!
It gets worse if I elaborate.
I work in a take-away.
We don’t know how the tooth got there. It was just THERE. On the counter. When the shop was empty, my collegue was cleaning down the counter. And there. It. Was.
I refuse to elaborate on its condition, colour, size, etc.
I feel like yarfing just *reading* about it. Good Lord.