POWER TOOTH FILLS THE GAP

The power tooth, as defined on this blog, is more than a tooth.

It is all your teeth, a lifetime of teeth.

Is that powerful enough for you to keep up with them?

More importantly, powerful enough for me, the tooth blogger?

I went to the dentist exactly zero times between the ages 19 and 28.

At nineteen an Army dentist looked at my grill and gave me a pass.

Nothing to see, nothing to do, which I credit to my Mom and Dr. Holman in North Bend.

My Mom didn’t have a cavity until she into her forties; Dr. Holman filled a couple of mine in Jr. High.

After that I became more vigilant about dental health. I was scared into it and glad I was.

At twenty-eight the dentist told me, “If everyone came in with teeth like yours I’d have to fine a new profession.”

 

Pro Tip To Single People:

If you date someone long enough to talk about teeth, and they say they never go to a dentist, you might want to re-evaluate things.

 

Personal Hygiene Is Couple Hygiene

Does anyone remember the first time you kissed someone who smoked cigarettes?

You looked into each other’s dyes in the pale moonlight, a soft warm breeze quaking the aspen trees, and you go in.

Did you choke back a vomit urge wondering if your special one ate dog shit for dinner?

Or licked an ashtray? What is that smell?

After you recovered and took a breath, did you decide to start smoking to counter the god-awful surprise?

For non-smoking kissers it’s important not to gag on that first cigarette before starting up again.

 

Variables such as your current oral health, diet, how much you smoke, and how often you light up can determine how long it takes for smoking to affect oral health.

However, it’s important to know that in as little as one week of smoking, your oral health may become noticeably compromised.

My Dad was a big fan of smoking.

I’ve seen a high school picture of him in his letterman sweater leaning against a post in his hometown with a cigarette in one hand, a girl on his arm.

Smoke ’em if you got ’em?

I think he smoked more when he joined the Marines and went to war in Korea.

Just reading his Silver Star Citation will make you want to light one up.

The girl on his arm was my future Mom, a non-smoker, but the Old Man smoked all the way through their marriage from house to car to any damn place he wanted.

His teeth suffered.

I gave him a gentle reminder about smoking after quintuple by-pass surgery.

He gave me a gentle reminder to mind my own damn business.

So we smoked a few nails together out on the porch.

 

The Long Game Of A Power Tooth

Two people in my house needed some dental work.

They followed their dentists’ instructions and it all worked out, but it took a year of complaining.

It seemed like an avoidable ordeal, which I avoided by going to the dental school.

Was it a good choice? Yes, it was. I got a tour of behind the scenes dental work with patients in chairs across an entire floor, students hovering over them, and professors checking their work at every step.

And a root canal to go. It was a first, and it was everything I’d ever heard said about root canals.

• Why don’t patients want to show up for a root canal? They lost their nerve.

• What do you call it when an astronaut ends up getting a cavity? It’s a black hole.

• Why should a donut go to the dentist? To get a filling.

• Where do dentists move when they retire? They head to Flourida.

• What did the tooth say to the dentist when the dentist was getting ready to leave? Be sure you fill me in when you’re back.

• Before the dentist started working, what did the lawyer need from him? A retainer.

• Why does everyone go to the dentist when they have problems? The dentist gets to the root of the issue.

• When the orca needed braces, where did he go? He went to the orca-dontist.

• Why did the dentist take a trip to Panama? He wanted to see a root canal.

 

The Tooth, The Whole Tooth, And Nothing But The Tooth

My wife, who is not the lady in the picture, belonged to a professional organization that did a yearly community festival.

Food, drink, and a raffle kept it going.

She won a raffle ticket for a free dental exam and gave it to me.

Even if you believe you possess Super Teeth, it’s still a good idea to get checked out.

This is what happens when you spend time with someone who cares about you.

Does it still qualify as nagging from the wife? No, not this time. (Hey honey.)

 

So there we were, engaged in a deep meaningful conversation about who looked fat in which pants, or something less important, and she stopped and stared at me.

“You’ve got open decay on your tooth and gum disease. Why are you letting your teeth rot out of your mouth. Your face is going to cave in without teeth. When did you last see a dentist? How long?” she said.

Let me tell you, she ruined the mood. I didn’t tell her I’d just eaten a handful of blueberries, which must have looked like tooth decay and gum rot.

In what felt like a miracle of modern scheduling, I called my kid’s dentist and got in the next day.

They followed strict covid pandemic guidelines all the way through for one of the best experiences in the chair I’ve had.

After the pictures, x-rays, cleaning, the works, I asked about the big issues I brought with me.

Did I have an open cavity? Gum disease? What should I keep an eye out for?

 

 More Than Teeth

Broken teeth, bad teeth, rotting teeth, are part of a downward spiral that picks up steam  the older we get.

No kid, no Millennial, GenZ, or Gen Alpha comes onto BoomerPdx for medical advice, but they should.

 

If you can feed yourself you’ll need regular dental check-ups to stay on schedule. Why? Because in the long haul things go wrong.

You could have an exploded molar in a root canaled tooth. Then what?

You could have it pulled in a prolonged probe to make sure every single piece of exploded tooth is out from all the way down in there.

Top it off with a bone-graft. Then what?

 

I like people who navigate their career with extra educational fervor.

Dr. McAllister fits on my team of All-Stars.

He is both a board-certified diplomate of the American Board of Periodontology and of the International Congress of Oral Implantology.

Prior to starting his own practice in Tigard, Dr. McAllister was a full time faculty member at the Oregon Health Sciences University. He was the director of the dental implant program for the residents and performed research related to implantology. 

Dr. McAllister: One of the biggest impediments for patients is the word ‘Surgery.’

I wasn’t sure what my problem was but hearing Dr. McAllister explain the importance of tooth health moved my needle to go.

Was I one of those afraid of the word surgery? Well, yes I was, but I kept it to myself so I could scoff at anyone as nervous.

Dr. McAllister: Most of the anxiety is before the procedure, with the takeaway being it wasn’t as difficult as they’d imagined.

These are the words from a master of their profession.

And they are as correct the day before as they are the day after.

If you’re here for the long haul and need a dental update, you know who to call.

Then you put on your Actuary hat and start working the numbers. Your age, your life expectancy, and the cost of a tooth implant.

And you come up with, “Why bother?”

 

Power Tooth Celebration

Let’s say you go through a year of prep and healing waiting for everything to set up for that new tooth.

The day comes, you show up early for your appointment after a gruesome tooth extraction, a metal post drilled into your jaw, and the mold for your power tooth complete.

Half an hour later you’re walking out while running your tongue over a solid wall of teeth where a gap once was, and you get a feeling.

If that was the only missing tooth you might get a feeling of being whole, being healthy.

You feel like buying a whole crab and cracking it with your teeth, too.

Ignore that feeling.

Instead, just feel that tooth. It’s the best tooth in your head now. Indestructible. That’s why it’s a power tooth.

If it’s not a visible tooth, it feels like a secret and you’ve cracked the code.

But if it was a front tooth, and this is what you lived with for too long:

You are on the right track for the best smile you’ve ever seen.

Even if you’re not a big smiler, don’t believe in giving the world your best face, you’ll still find yourself smiling in the bathroom mirror and every mirror you see the rest of your life.

But, if you’re on the fence about a power tooth and think, ‘I’m not a narcissist so what’s the big deal with a missing tooth?”

Think of the rest of us. Don’t you care about strangers looking away when you open your mouth?

Either you do, or you don’t, and that’s the whole tooth.