Tooth Gone ~ Hurrah!!

THE TROUBLESOME TOOTH is troubling me no more. The dentist yanked it out twenty minutes ago!! (I'm writing this around Monday noon.) I am so pleased¬¬!!! For three weeks that thing had been bothering me and I'm pretty sure that site was focus for all the gumzy flare-ups I've been getting. The tooth looked less like a perfect white edifice in pink gum than a volcanic peg jutting from a crater. It was loose. When it hurt most it hurt so much I could barely close my mouth that side, let alone eat. Then all pain faded. Then it crept back but not as bad, y'know, irritating teething "get the tooth out" almost itchy kinda business... The dentist was NOT very impressed by the state of my dental health. Didn't ask how/why/whatever it got like that so I didn't bother explaining it was my MENTAL condition that had got my mouth into such a state. Chainsmoking. The inner front bottoms have gone BLACK. Tartar is everywhere. Some years ago, when I psychotically lost it completely I basically gave up on cleaning my teeth for about a year... they were in SUCH a state... far better now. Believe it or not the "ash tray look" blackening is less than half as bad, after continuous 8-times a day brushing than it was a couple of years ago...
He told me it was the smoking that has caused all this. So I said, "The only thing I can do really is give up, isn't it?" and he said "That's right."
Then he did the extraction, which involved THREE implements. He injected the anaesthetic too quickly so it hurt. I know he did this deliberately. If you don't wanna see bad teeth, why gravitate to DENTISTRY? This I do not comprehend...
The stubborn swine of a tooth took about two minutes of undignified yanking on the dentist's part, to disturbing creaking and cracking sounds that of course resonated right into my ear-'oles... And now it's gone. Not only was it rotten from root to tip, but it had a missing chunk (no wonder it always felt craggy in my mouth). Dr Miserable told me the gum disease from around it had gone right to the root, hence pain on biting down.
I know he COULD, if he could be bothered, have provided a false permanently plugged in one, but not everything is free on the NHS and I suspect that wouldn't be. Receptionist told me hygienist appointments aren't NHS either and they cost £40.
(And I need one really badly.) I think I'm going to shop around.
A few years ago the government altered the dentists' charter, or whatever you call it ~ the system whereby they get paid. So they no longer get paid per job but per patient, which means someone like me is barely worth bothering with because I'm lots of work for same money as a five year-old needing a minifilling... know what I mean. Apparently nothing's to stop me from going to separate dentists for every individual job, so maybe I'll do that. I was well up for being treated as four or five mystery patients but Mr Misery didn't deserve that kind of Brucie Bonus, so I never suggested it...
... So I'm sat here, half my face packed out with blood clots, anaesthetic still killing my palate stone dead... And I'm happy as larry.

THE TOOTH IS GONE:~ HURRAH! HURRAH!! HURRAH!!!

Photos: not my mouth, but you get the drift...

Chinchillas and Teeth!

MY POOR Shreddie-muncher on Saturday got cancelled, so here's another cutie. I don't know if I'm going to have any "chins" in the near future. They're a bit big and the cage they need (which must be chew-proof, not just a rabbit-hutch) is enormous and very expensive too. Also they're social animals, so I'd need at least two. Having kept social hammies in groups, the group interaction entertainment is too much to miss. Also I think it's cruel to keep furry animals in solitary confinement. If you're going to make a South American Mars Rabbit who naturally sleeps most of the daytimes and spends evenings hoppetting and pinging about the stern crags of the High Andes reside in a metal dog-carrier-looking cage, the very least you can do is make the cage as spacious as possible, with toys like exercise wheels, which all rodents love (so much so that some species of hammy will neglect their babies in order to trundle away) and buy your pets company. In London, baby chinchillas are about £25 each and the 4ft x 3ft x 3ft cage would be about £100. Which is quite a lot of money. And not very practical when it's technically "no pets" and my robbies used to hide from the landlord by day in an aquarium stashed in a closet! At night they rambled in a furry pingpong balls donkey derby, all three scurrying on the wheel at once. Poor Baby Itchy, who was smallest and lightest couldn't always fit on and frequently ended up hanging on the side for dear life as her tubby Sister Spherical thundered obliviously onwards, on that big wheel in the dark.
Roborovski hamsters are extremely flighty by nature and startle easily, which doesn't really make them good pets for children, who of course will want to pick them up. Of my three, Itchy was the only one I managed to hand-tame, and even she was prone to unexpected panic, when she would bunny-hop on the floor. And sometimes escape this way. And go missing for three or four days at a time. Which had me absolutely fraught.
I couldn't believe it when she died. I actually cried. Then Bashful went. Spherical lived a further three months alone with all the seeds to herself, then she trundled on to that big wheel in the sky...
Small rodents like that have a typical life-span of only two months in the wild and mine lived just over two years. So I think they had a decent innings...
I'm still zigzagging about whether/when/how to get new ones. Robos aren't the easiest of pets to source. Lots of shops told me they wouldn't sell them because they're "too small, too fast and not suitable for children".
But if you think of them as furry tropical fish ~ it something you watch in the tank and don't expect to take out. Their antics were exceedingly amusing. They were my sole furry ray of light in some of the darkest months of my life, when I was in that crackhouse with Matran the Rat Man and prostitute girlfriend Laundretta. Nasty times!
I'm off to the dentist later this morning, hoping for an extraction. If he does yank the bad tooth, this will be my fourth, if an impacted wisdom tooth is counted as well.
My first extraction was pretty much an emergency. A tooth that had always twinged and annoyed me and I knew wasn't right but no dentist ever did anything for it, though they must have seen its rotten profile on x-ray exploded in a fairground crash on "dodgems". The top fell out. When he kindly pulled the base, what was left looked like a china toilet fitting full of rotten apple pulp. It was nasty. Then another dentist noticed the gap left by this and thought it would be cool to even out both sides. So he pulled a perfectly healthy tooth. It is this that has left me of a cynical view of dentists, who up till recently. got paid per filling/etc. (Now they're paid by patient, no matter how much work is required, making someone like me economically unviable). Anyway the NEXT dentist said whoever did that second extraction ought to be shot. Then I had constant wisdom tooth pains. I bit down deliberately on the gum, even though it hurt, thinking I was doing good. Until my next dentist showed me an x-ray of said tooth, still completely under the gum, shunting all the rest sideways... this, apparently, is what "impacted" means.
To treat it, he had to cut open my gum in a Y-shape, use a drill to destroy some of the top of the tooth, leaving space to grip and yank it out. Then he pulled really hard. I actually like extractions far more than fillings. Of course my mouth is frozen to liquid methane type temperatures so it's not as if I feel it. But fillings I detest. Anyway he pulled it out and all was fine. Until I tried to eat... and thought I would never eat again! For months I had a cavern there at the back. Ten years later it's nicely healed. And now this wobbler, that, so the internet tells me, either needs a root canal job, or pulling out and replacing with a falsie (which is my preferred option). Theoretically both treatments are free on the NHS...
I'm not quivering inwardly. I'm not in panic. But I'm not exactly looking forward to any of this and this teeth-talk's putting me off. So I'd better go. I'll let y'all know how I got on.
Have a nice day everyone!

At the Dentist... At last!!

FINALLY! I got to book a dentist appointment for Monday!

My rotten teeth shall be no more!

I can barely eat at the moment because the putrescence hurts so much.

There's a particularly nasty one at the back on one side that wobbles and makes me practically hit the ceiling if ever I (accidentally) bite down on the rotter!

And on Monday all these problems shall be gone!!

Is this too good to be true?

Read what I have to say on Monday, and see!!

My brains are turning into:

GUM HEALTH gel. Bonjela Cool Mint Gel contains the active ingredients: Choline salicylate 8.714% w/w (a non-steroidal antiinflamatory) and cetalkonium chloride 0.01% (antiseptic) w/w...

And I'm popping:

like they're going out of fashion.

If the problem were:



instead of just gums I'd be all up for using:

and yanking the offending one(s) out myself... but as it is, it's

and a trip to the

for me!

And in case you want something furry because it's "Friday on Saturday" here's a polar bear stuck on a melting ice floe. I know just how he/she feels:

Bad Gums

I CANNOT be posting about being depressed today, like I said I would. I was typing the boring post in for ages and it's still not finished. I got something wrong with me gums up top and they hurt like hell. I'm off to find a dentist right now! (And I'm still depressed.)