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The Man With the Hyperactive Head

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My dentist always twits me about my chewing my teeth into oblivion. I do not think I grind my teeth at night, but she thinks I do. And there are the ruined sites of three of my long lost upper teeth. two bicuspids and a molar. She also thinks I live on a diet of jalapeño chile peppers.

In truth, there is something violent about my visage. Take my sneezes: They are so powerful that I have to be prepared to go to the bathroom after a sneezing fit. I find facial tissues to be useless, as I tend to blow them to smithereens. Like my father, I frequently rupture a capillary when I erupt. In my case, it’s usually in my left nostril.

Then there are my sinuses. Whenever there is a major change in the weather (which in L.A. means just about always), I turn into mucus man. I frequently wake Martine up with my snorting, sneezing, and nose-blowing. As she has a tendency to be insomniac, she usually requests that I transfer my drainage to the couch in the living room.

Then, too, my eyelids are constantly irritated with blepharitis. In certain times of the year, usually winter, spring, summer, and fall, my eyelids itch and generate an annoying discharge.

What’s next for me? Great gobs of earwax sticking out of my ears? Saliva that roars like a waterfall? Is my head just too damned loud?

Another Tooth Bites the Dust

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Teeth Are Not Always What They’re Cracked Up To Be

It started about a month ago. One of my upper bicuspids felt loose with several millimeters of give. I toyed with the notion of grabbing the tooth and yanking it out by main strength, but I decided to seek professional help instead. Of course, a visit to the dentist is bound to cost big bucks, so I had to take a pension distribution in preparation.

This afternoon, I finally went in to see Dr. Sakurai. She took one look at my wiggly tooth and, knowing my mouth from past experience, said she suspected the tooth was cracked. So she x-rayed it and, sure enough, there was a horizontal crack halfway down. It came out in two pieces.

Most people would just get a denture, but it seems I’ve inherited a special sensitivity to any pressure on the roof of my mouth from my father. Many times I remember him stopping in the middle of a meal, turning purple, and ejecting his dentures by force across the dinner table. (But then, of course, my parents got their dentures for free courtesy of the Peoples’ Republic of Hungary.)

The other option is super expensive: to get dental implants. Unfortunately, it would be even more expensive for me, as I would have to have an anesthesiologist handy in case I didn’t come out of the anesthetic properly. That is because, lacking a pituitary gland, my body does not produce adrenaline; and sometimes I need adrenaline to come out of the anesthetic.

Fortunately, my missing teeth are to the side, so I don’t yet have a jagged smile. Unfortunately, I may yet; as extractions frequently cause problems to the adjacent healthy teeth. So it goes.

The Tooth, the Whole Tooth, and Nothing But the Tooth

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Uh oh! A couple days ago, I felt a sharp pain in one of my upper molars. Plus, when I drank anything cold, I felt the same pain. My last dental siege involved a new crown for one of my bicuspids, which couldn’t stay on. That was followed by two root canals of the bicuspid and an adjacent tooth, which had to be scrapped by having the tooth pulled. Total cost: about $4,500.

That sort of sequence is not exactly balm to someone like me on a fixed income. After that adventure, I did something I had never really done before. I purchased an electric toothbrush and did a thorough brushing of the gums and all tooth surfaces (fore, aft, and sides) for two full minutes—timed—before going to bed.

Today, I saw my dentist and had the sore tooth x-rayed. Apparently, the problem was caused by the molar next to the extracted bicuspid sticking out a little too far. So my dentist carefully measured my bite and trimmed the tooth so it wouldn’t receive too much pressure from my normal chewing of food.

The good news: It seems to be holding up for now.

On the Longevity of Teeth

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I Am About to Lose Another Tooth

Within the last year and a half or so, whenever one of my crowns comes loose, there is some collateral damage that entails either (or both) a root canal and an extraction. I remember that my great grandmother, father, and mother all had false teeth. With my father, the false teeth were problematical, as any pressure on the roof of his mouth led to his ejecting his dentures at high speed across the kitchen table, to the amusement of my brother and myself. (I have inherited the same roof-of-the-mouth sensitivity, which makes me not a comfortable candidate for dentures.)

Now suddenly, I find myself in a similar situation. As my former dentist, Dr. Thomson Sun, said, “Teeth don’t last forever.” I am beginning to find that he is right.

Truth to tell, I have been greatly remiss about oral hygiene. I didn’t brush my teeth after every meal, or even once a day—and as for flossing, fuggedaboutit! I have become more regular about brushing my teeth with an electric toothbrush every evening before going to bed, but there were all those years during which I let plaque accumulate and attack my teeth.

I would love to have implants, but not only are they expensive, I would need special surgery to increase the bone mass of my upper teeth, where all the recent damage has occurred. And for me, it would be even more expensive because I would need to have an anesthesiologist present to make sure I awaken. (This harks back to my lack of a pituitary gland, and therefore no adrenaline.)

So if things continue along the same line, I will have a crystal meth addict’s smile, which is good for frightening small children and young women.