Just got back from the county dental clinic. Amazingly, they got me in the same day he called. He thought it would be about a week. I thought it’d be weeks or even months. Also amazingly, there weren’t many people and there were no screaming kids. Perhaps if I hadn’t brought my iPod there would have been.

The doctor, an Asian guy, looked at the two x-ray pictures of the back bottom left area and pointed out pus which means the very back tooth is infected after all. This would explain since the nerve runs from the ear all the way along the jaw, why it sometimes felt like my ear was bothering me. It also explains why it felt like multiple teeth were a problem, the fatigue, the dizziness and the ringing in my ear that I’ve been experiencing.

I thought he was just going to pull the tooth then and there, but he said we had to deal with the infection first, so he wrote me a prescription for an antibiotic. This is my first prescription medicine since the 90s!

He said I did have the option of getting a root canal and crown done, but that’d cost us around $400 even with the discount we could get. As Tom agrees, though, if a tooth is that bad it should just be pulled no matter how much money you have. So on the 27th of next month, the fucker’s gone. For now, he cemented it with this filling that’s not really a filling and said not to eat anything hard. It will probably fall out soon enough anyway.

The biggest surprise was his telling me I still had pretty good teeth. Pretty good teeth?!?! I wonder if he even bothered to look at the other teeth. Then again, their job isn’t to deal with teeth, but just emergencies.

I told him soft enamel runs in my family and that everyone eventually loses their teeth, but he insisted they’re still pretty good and looked at me like I was crazy when I said he could pull them all for all I cared. Maybe if the bastard above would ever allow my husband a job and us some real dental insurance, I could get them sealed. They have a sealer that protects against cavities now which they didn’t have a decade or so ago.

Wait till I tell my folks! Mom turns 79 on the 6th so I’ll call them or maybe even sooner, depending on my schedule.

So much for thinking the antiseptic mouthwash and the peroxide would keep me from getting infected, and so much for thinking that just because I didn’t have a fever it meant I wasn’t infected, but I’m not at all surprised. I “felt” infected and it’s just hard to believe one would feel so much pain without being infected in some way.

When Tom and I were talking about that nerve afterward, he reminded me that that was the same nerve that was the biggest danger when I had ear surgery. Yeah, well, it’s too bad the doctor didn’t fuck it up good!

The assistant I talked to before the doctor came in said dentures were nothing to look forward to. She said the top isn’t so bad because up there you have more of a ridge for them to grab onto for suction, but the lower ones slip easier because of tongue movements and not having as much of a ridge, which lessens with age. She also said something about losing 40% of biting pressure with age.

The co-pay for the appointment was $12.50 and the prescription was $6.