When I was young, the concept of seeing a dentist is narrowed down to either having the tooth (or teeth) pulled, or making a denture. Actually maybe just the denture work because there were many “home remedy” options for taking the tooth out. It can be done by force with a strong flick of the fingers, or dungeon style using home tools such as the pliers, or tie the string to the tooth and pull, or tie the string to a doorknob and slam the door, or to the hammer and throw it… As you can see, we could get very creative with this task. There was no such thing called dental insurance when I grew up, and dental care was down to one option: brush your teeth. If the family could not afford toothpaste, there was always salt. Want strong teeth? Chew the areca nut (like tobacco). It tainted the teeth blackish, but makes them super strong (so you can bite the bullet if you want. Actually, don’t ever try this. I haven’t heard anyone doing that, but you shouldn’t be the first to try!! Again, just don’t!)
OK. That wasn’t truly my understanding of dentistry, but the truth is we don’t have dental care back in the day. Now living in the US, we have this dental benefit and we should take advantage of it more. Sadly, my teeth department has not been paid much attention and being neglected like the old college books in the basement. I was just going too keep ignoring it, but too many people had noticed my ugly, blacken front tooth. This was from probably 15 years back, when I was pretending to be a superhero, messing around, cartwheeling, flipping and ended up landing with my mouth on the cement floor. So the tooth was dead and stay dead for many years. With my recent visit to the dentist office, they gave me the estimate for crowning the tooth, and it wasn’t seem too bad. It does not cost nearly an arm and a leg, so I decide it’s time to drop the “dough” (as in dollars) to beautify my smile.
Actually, there’s several steps before calling this tooth a king and put a crown on it. First, I need to bleach my teeth to bring out the whiteness of the attractive smile. Then I am scheduled to sit in the chair and being knocked out for about an hour and half while the dentist does the root canal work. Actually it will be an attempt at the root canal because it has been so long, the tooth might have become fossil already and he might not able to reach deep enough to retract the dead vein. That’s lot of effort to save one tooth, don’t you think? But it’s better this way. Better than wearing a one tooth denture for sure, I think!
Talking about teeth whitening, there are so many choices: over counter/off the shelf products, take-home kit, or done in the dentist office. I got great tips from a friend, and decide to go with the the take-home kit. It’s still expensive but probably worth it, and save time. I got my teeth impression done last week which makes the mold that fit precisely to my teeth. I received the bleach gel kit today and it comes with two sets of 4-gel tube. For some reason, I thought of Botox injection when I first saw the kit even though I have never seen what the Botox kit would look like. Weird thought! The dentist assistance explained that there might be some chance of numbness and tingling pain would occur, which kind of scare me for a bit. Who would have guess that there would be some pain involved in bleaching teeth?! Oh well, no pain no gain I guess. Anyway, I can’t wait to try bleaching tonight. I need to watch it and not to leave them on for too long for them to become glowing-in-the-dark, as seen in one of the TV sitcom Friend’s episode when Ross bleached his teeth before going on a date. LOL.
Wait until I smile at you next time!
Tags: dentist, teeth whitening, Thuong
