My day started out with a desperate craving for ice, liquor,
pot, painkillers anything...
anything to make my
toothache go away. All I got was ice and
Motrin. A trip to the
NYU Dental Clinic (which thankfully had emergency hours today) gave me
penicillin and IB 800s, but my face still looks horrible, my cheek has all sorts of redness from unhappy
capillaries, my swollen jaw has a horrible knot in it, and I now have confirmation that I'm going to
lose another tooth.
This is humiliating.
My teeth look deceptively intact and relatively aligned, people aren't staring at my teeth in repulsion, but next week I'm losing yet another molar. I had four pulled out when I had braces many years ago because for a girl with a big mouth, it was awfully crowded in there (I'd make this seem more dramatic, but Josh says I can't count my wisdom or baby teeth getting pulled out). Last year, I cracked the center molar on the lower right side biting into an altoid, which split the tooth in half. Not having any money for dental work, I let the wiggly tooth sit around for nearly a year, and ended up having to have that yanked. And now the center molar on my lower left jaw (which has had a temporary crown on for too long, initially due to procrastination since I had paid 90% of the bill many years ago, and then couldn't afford to go back and pay for the new crown work since time had passed) is all gross and infected.
The student-doctor was hopeful that the tooth could be saved so long as everything underneath was intact, but apparently, the prior dentist had used the outdated method of putting a screw in my jaw (which was believed to help hold a crown on) and in reality it ended up causing my tooth to fracture way deep down.
It's not like it's noticeable when I smile, It sure as hell is when I yawn and I forget to cover my mouth enough times. I'm worried about how eating is going to be effected. I'm worried about the rest of my teeth falling out. I inherited bad teeth, I've had cavities galore since I was a kid. My teeth are semi-translucent already from some bone loss (I wish-I wish-I wish I had taken my calcium pills more steadily when I was younger).
I feel gross, and dirty and trashy (and not the good kind of trashy). Unless Medicaid comes through (and it would have by now if I had applied at Social Services instead of through an HMO), I'm not going to be able to fix my teeth anytime soon, really. Who would want any part of their body in my mouth (besides Pyro who seems unphased by this)? I mean, I suppose it's better to have missing teeth than various teeth rotting away and a blackened smile. I should be counting my lucky stars that I don't have any sort of gum disease, just some recession, that at least my teeth are clean.
At least if I'm ever rich, I can get me a new set. They can do implants and all sorts of restorative things for gums these days. I wonder if a phone sex career would make me enough to get my teeth done right? Of course, nobody's ever going to want to call a phone sex line ever again after reading this. Of course, I also now can't have references to E2 anywhere near my future phone sex website. However, there are fetishists of all sorts...but I'm sure they'd prefer I just had a full set of dentures.
This really isn't making me feel any better. I feel like you're all going to be staring at me at noder events thinking, ACK! this is the girl who's missing teeth and avoid me like I'm some plaque. When I had the molar pulled last year, though, I was surprised at the (albeit small) number of people who also were missing a tooth here and there. BUT STILL.
*sigh*
do you still love me? would you still want to kiss me? please tell me you can accept this reality.
Oh!
I really wasn't planning on whining about my teeth for so long since more traumatic things were observed today on my walk crosstown (that, of course, was supposed to make me FEEL CALMER) from the clinic.
At Petland in Union Square, five or six adult gerbils and a slew of pinkies were being kept ONLY in a 10 gallon tank. The adults were of mixed gender which is NEVER a good thing in the gerbil world when they're full grown considering their breeding habits and that the females get CRAZY JEALOUS and can end up eating other gerbils alive (despite not being meat-eaters), and any more than 2 or 3 gerbils should be kept in at least a 20 gallon tank because they need to run around. Upon mentioning this to a store clerk, he brushed it off. Then, to illustrate the fact that there were already babies and it was somehow no big deal, he took the tank down off of the shelf and SHOOK IT several times to the move the adults to the side, tossing around the gerbils and pinkies. These are not going to end up being human-trusting gerbils. They looked so horribly unhappy as it was. I'm going to try to go back there early this week.
After that, I passed a pet store on 6th avenue with doggies in the front window, and figured I'd get some good fuzz therapy and watch them play. I immediately noticed that one of the puppies had a wicked eye infection in his right eye, and it had spread slightly to the other. Another passerby who noticed this at the same time went into the store to point this out to the clerk, who was completely nonchalant about it, eventually picking up the puppy to take a look at it. This infection looked as if it had been going on for a few days already, how could they not have noticed? :(
Time for a round of pill popping and ice packs.
I really wish Mary Jane was here with me through all of this, though.
At least Pyro's hugs are.
Love,
dee