Ouch

[kevin_standlee]

While I could probably have dragged myself into work today, I had no in-person meetings scheduled and it seemed tolerable for me to work from home, so I did. I even managed one video-conference meeting, which was just a one-on-one talk with the person in question, but did prove that the technology would indeed work from my home connection, which bodes well for the future.

So a bit after noon I started to make some lunch, part of which included some relatively soft gouda cheese. I've been trying to chew only on the left side of my mouth because of the temporary crowns on the rear lower right two teeth, but a bit of cheese got over to the wrong side. And grabbed hold of my crowns and popped them off.

Fortunately, I didn't do something silly like swallow them. I managed to spit everything out and get it cleaned off. Not only did the crowns pop off, but they also broke apart. The temporary crowns had been cast as a single piece since the teeth are adjacent, but they came out of my mouth as two pieces.

I called my dentist's office and they said that if I could get up there right away they could fix things. So I pulled myself together as fast as I could and got on the road. I got there a little bit after 1 PM. Dr. Ferrer took care of things, cleaning the crowns, re-seating them with new cement, and confirming that they aren't grinding or meshing wrong. I just have to be a bit more careful until the permanent crowns are ready for placement in a couple of weeks.

My dentist's office normally closes at 1 PM on Thursdays. Dr. Ferrer stuck around until after 1 PM and worked on me, and was very good about it. I'm very grateful, because it would have been very difficult to eat without the crowns in place protecting my ground-down teeth. I like my dentist. If you're looking for a good, professional dentist in the Redwood City area, I'd love to refer you to Dr. Anthony Ferrer.

Comments

[daveon.livejournal.com]

My first ever crown the dentist ground the tooth into a platform to fit the crown. It eventually came off... I think it was a mouthful of Skittles.

The crowns I've had at my dentist here, he delicately grinds away the decay to leave all the healthy tooth he can and makes a crown to fit the jagged shape that's left so he can maximize the surface area for glue.

So far so good but having the fitted it not a pleasant process.

He is very very good though. M got head butted by our dog (by accident) and we were concerned that her front teeth were loosened. We called the office on a Saturday, he answered and told us to come in. He drove in for us. Looked her over and said she was fine and mentioned that he'd be out of town in Germany for a week. When I asked why and it turned out that a) I knew what the Nurenbergrung was and b) I watched Top Gear, he waived any charges and we went home.

That said, I think I've spent $8000 out of pocket on crowns in the last 5 years and I think he was cutting us some slack....

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

My dentist uses the second of the two techniques you describe, trying to save as much of the tooth as he can. I'm sure things will be better when the permanent crown is in place with the permanent cement. As it stands now, he can only use temporary cement of course because the temp crown has to come off in two weeks.

[melchar.livejournal.com]

OMG it was the -cheese- again! I had a flashback about the bit of cheddar that broke my tooth last month [which is now still not in a finished root canal condtion for various reasons].

I bet Trey would call this another bit of evidence about 'the cheese conspiracy' - so I smile & wince at the same time. ^_^

[travelswithkuma.livejournal.com]

Ifs tooths hurts don't eats thes bones ofs thes fishs likes bears dos.