...the whole tooth and nothing but...

I had Monday off as a vacation day, but some vacation it turned out to be: two hours in a dentist's chair.

I've had problems with a tooth off-and-on since January. The dentist gave me a root canal under a broken tooth, and told me it would need a crown before I bit down hard and split the tooth, because he'd have to pull it. Yeah, yeah, Doc…sure.

I thought about it for a few weeks, then decided I'd better get an appointment for the crown, so set it up with the office. Within hours of setting the appointment I bit down--hard--and split the tooth. I knew I'd done something but hoped it wasn't as bad as I was imagining. As it turned out it was that bad.

So now I have yet another hole in my mouth. I called in sick today although I guess I could have gone to work. I just didn't feel like it: "under the weather" is how I explained it to my boss. Since I rarely call in sick he can't say much when I do.

I'm still set for a crown, but on the tooth behind the pulled tooth, because that was is ready to chomp down on and split. I, who never had a cavity until age 27, who felt himself invincible, who didn't know what people meant when they talked about root canals or Novocain, am now a walking catalogue of what can go wrong with teeth, and what happens when it does.