Decisions, decisions, decisions!

During the Christmas break I noticed that when I cleaned my teeth, my mouth would bleed. I found where the problem was; way up the back on the left hand side of my mouth. It's where a wisdom tooth is just peeping through the gum. It has never come through any more than 3 little tips of the tooth. The other wisdom teeth have never come through at all.
Naturally the dental practice closes over Christmas/ New Year, so it wasn't until yesterday that I was able to get an appointment.

My lovely dentist diagnosed an infection in the wisdom tooth ( which though a bit uncomfortable didn't warrant antibiotics) and discussed options.
1 Remove the wisdom tooth. This would be difficult as most of the tooth is buried in the gum. After the extraction there would be some discomfort.
2. Instead of pulling out the wisdom tooth, remove the tooth beside it. The benefit of this is that there would be quicker healing after the extraction...less pain etc. Apparently this next tooth is preventing the wisdom tooth from emerging out of the gum and this is the primary cause of the discomfort and also making it easier for infection to invade.
The idea is that the wisdom tooth would then gradually grow upwards in the gum. But my dentist said that sometimes the wisdom tooth doesn't emerge...ever. Another 'con' is that by removing a perfectly good double molar tooth, my lower matching molar would have nothing to match up with, thus affecting my bite/chewing.
By this time my head was reeling with all this information...but I decided on option 1 so on February 1, that pesky wisdom tooth will be history!
So it will be back to that funky waiting room!

PS All my other teeth passed inspection and the 'clean and fluoride treatment' was over in a flash 😁

Another unexpected outing...

For a few years I've been whinging complaining querying my dentist about the occasional ache in my gum where I have a small crown. Each time, Tony dutifully probes with those hideous pointed tools, x- rays the offending area, and has always pronounced that there were no problems with the crown. And the pain would disappear on its own any way!

Well after I left hospital last week, this tooth has started playing up, making it difficult to eat even. This started last Saturday...but it was only every second day that I would have the soreness. On Wednesday this week, I decided I could stand it no more and rang the dental surgery and got an appointment for yesterday afternoon. Within the hour of making the appointment, I suddenly realised that I had a sore lump in the gum where the crowned tooth was...so I was glad that I'd made that appointment. Then later in the evening...the lump had gone!! And I could chew food on that side again.

Urban Dental at Kelvin Grove

So yesterday afternoon, I sat in the chair and told him the story...what a weird and convoluted tale it was! Tony got to work with those probing tools and then after that took a single x-ray... and found a large abscess. Needless to say he was very surprised, as there was little sign when he did the examination. He hadn't found any sore spots when he was probing around the crown and the gum. (remember I did say that the pain comes and goes???)

While I sat outside the dentists waiting for DH to bring the car around, I noticed the interesting pattern on the footpath...I have walked on it so many times before but have never noticed this!!

The 'dramas with this tooth started when I was in my late teens when I got an infection in a temporary filling put in by the family dentist. Problems have tended to flare up with this tooth about every 10-12 years, necessitating root canal work, part crowns, full crowns, with the last work done in 2004 when Tony saved it from extraction. This time however, he  has recommended that I get the tooth removed.  He offered to so that yesterday but as I just couldn't face it, I said 'I was too fragile', so I have a course of antibiotics to take now...big ones too!

Looking down the street from where I was sitting. The Kelvin Grove Urban Village was built on the site of the former  Gona Army Base there. This street, like most in the village did not exist 10 years ago. 

DH and I didn't go straight home from the dentist...

We stopped in Alderley so DH could send off a parcel for me. I took a photo of the Physiotherapy sign; the practice is owned by a former student of mine.

Then DH drove us out to Grovely (Keperra) to Yarn Over, the yarn shop there. We bought a voucher as our donation to K4BN's Christmas raffle.

So Thursday turned out to be a big day for me. And after starting my course of antibiotics, I'm a bit zonked out at the moment and having lots of naps...:-)

Some dentists I've known...

The decor at my dentist's

I went to the dentist today to have my first appointment of 2 to get a crown. Hmmm...dentists...hasn’t always been a favourite subject of mine!  My first experience with going to the dentist wasn’t until I was about 7, but that wasn’t unusual for those times. My parents were concerned with my ‘over-bite’ so I was taken to my dad’s dentist. Dr Rappaport was his name and my parents said that he had been in an internment camp during the war because he was a Czechoslovakian Jew. (None of that meant much to a 7 year old)

I developed an overbite with protruding top teeth (genetic, from my mum's family)

I’m sure he was a nice man but I hated my visits to him. He took impressions for a brace for my teeth and I can remember that the ‘plate’ was a bit big for my mouth and the dentist also said that the white stuff on the plate was icecream. Well it wasn’t; it was peppermint flavoured plaster! And guess who hated peppermint flavour then??? Over the years I went to regular appointments with fear and trepidation. He didn’t use local anaesthetic for fillings, even deeper ones. Dr Rappaport was indeed a kind man because when my dad died when I was 15, the doctor never charged my mother for any of my treatments. When I left home to get married at not quite 21, I refused to go to him any more, much to my mother’s disgust with me!

That meant that I had to find my own dentist. Someone recommended a dentist in the next suburb, ‘who didn’t hurt’! That was enough for me so Dr Gil Shearer became my dentist. (and he didn’t hurt!) After a few years, he moved suburbs, but I followed. Then he decided to go into ‘specialist dentistry’ so Gil recommended a new dentist to the practice, Harvey Carter. Harvey was a blond blue-eyed ‘dreamboat’! Going to the dentist was a real pleasure. When my children came along, I took them to Harvey too. We had Harvey for years and then the inevitable happened. Harvey retired from dentistry (in his 40s mind you!) to devote more time to his extensive cattle properties in northern Queensland.

The suburb where that practice was, (Toowong) was getting busier and the trip there was getting longer due to heavier traffic so I just didn’t go for a while L. Then one year I was teaching Year 1 at the suburb next to where I lived. The local dentist would park his car in the staff carpark so that left an extra space for patients, outside his surgery across the road from the school. As a trade off for this carpark, he would talk to the Year 1s about dental care each year.

So that’s how I met Tony. After he talked to my class I chatted to him and told him of my dentist phobia and how the dentist I liked and trusted had flounced off to a new life without a backward glance. Tony was very sympathetic and claimed that his dental work didn’t hurt so I made an appointment. He has been my dentist since 1999 and touch wood...there is no talk of his retiring yet!! A few years ago he moved a few streets into a group practice and the good thing about that is that he is easier to get an appointment with now. Urban Dental also has a TV above the dentist chair which is probably quite swish...most of the time the sound is off or it is set to the news channel! lol

The photos of the staff  on Urban Dental's webpage shows them as children; this is Tony my dentist.

The other day when I went to the dentist because last Sunday night a piece of tooth broke off a molar, I discovered something that made me like my dentist even more. Kellie, the receptionist said, 'I don't want to offend you, but are you a senior?' And of course I am (business seniors card only). Now apparently that means I get a 10% discount. So that appointment left me very little out of pocket. (My health insurance doesn't pay full 100%, so I'm always out of pocket) The quote for my crown work also had the discount applied and I was happy to go ahead with the work. Then yesterday I got a letter from the Tax office. At first my heart sank....then when I opened the letter, I found that there was some money owing to me, to do with superannuation. A phone call revealed that I will get that money directly and guess what? It's just a little bit less than my out of pocket expenses for the crown!! How good is that?
Just another little bit about dentists I've known:-
A few years ago one of my nephews married a dentist; a beautiful girl. My BIL goes to Yas and says she is the most gentle dentist he has ever been to. Unfortunately the practice where she works is in the middle of Melbourne, a bit too far away!