Holes in my head

A couple of weeks ago, as I was eating supper, I felt something crunchy and slightly metal tasting in my mouth. As I recall we weren't eating anything crunchy or metally for dinner that night, so I was quite alarmed.

As it turned out, one of my very old, very metal, very large fillings was crumbling out of my tooth, one crunchy piece at a time. It stopped falling apart, thankfully, just short of the section protecting the nerve. But it did leave a very large, gaping hole in one of my left, lower molars.

As things usually happen in our family, we had just signed up for dental insurance through Honey's job, but coverage wasn't set to kick in for a couple of weeks. Thank goodness I wasn't in any pain! So I called my soon-to-be dentist the next morning, described my little situation to the nurse, and asked if it was something that I had to take care of right away, or if I could wait out the dental insurance. Provided, of course, that there continued to be no pain. Because I don't do pain in my head very well. Pain anywhere else on my body is doable, but pain in the head region is just not in my coping skill set.

Anyways, the nurse said that as long as I was happy waiting, there was no reason to get ahead of the insurance. I agreed, telling her that the tooth probably couldn't get much worse considering the enormous hole that was already there. So we set an appointment for a couple of days after the blessed insurance was set to begin.

She went on to suggest that I go to the pharmacy and ask for a temporary tooth filling kit. A what? I asked. Well, yes, I'd heard correctly. Apparently there are temporary tooth filling/crown replacing kits. That you can buy over-the-counter. That replace a filling in your tooth.

I'd never heard of such a thing as this, but decided to check it out. We were planning to leave town for a bit and I wanted a back-up plan in case the pain started in. So I went to my favorite chain pharmacy and asked for the OTC version of a temporary tooth filling. The helpful pharmacy technician led me to a display of several different choices of temporary fillings/crown reattachments. How on earth had I missed this? This innovation of technology?

After extensively reading every. single. package. available. I settled on two choices. Just in case one didn't work, I'd have another brand to try. Because I was afraid the pain would be too much to bear.

As I wandered to the cash register, I reasoned that it was probably a good thing I didn't know about this stuff in my no-dental-insurance days. I would have probably tried to use it for a permanent solution instead of actually taking a trip to the real dentist and getting the problem fixed the right way.

When I got home with my purchases, I employed Honey to install my temporary filling. Both products suggested waiting 1 hour before eating and we were between meals. So, to make sure I didn't miss any meals, it was imperative that we get that sucker in rightthissecond.





My two choices were:

and

I chose to go with the DenTek in the blue packaging. We followed the directions to the letter. Honey did the application since the hole was waaay back in the back and pretty huge, I wanted to make sure it was done right. I even waited about 2.5 hours to eat instead of the suggested 1 hour.

About 2 bites in to dinner, I swallowed something powdery and chalky. One check in the mirror confirmed that, yes, I'd just eaten the temporary filling.

That night before bed, Honey applied the REFILIT brand. We followed all the rules, guidelines, and suggestions. We reasoned that if it had the entire night to harden in place. It would surely survive more than one meal.

The next morning, after a night of grinding my teeth and clenching my jaw, because that is what I do on the nights that I sleep, I woke up to check the filling. When I opened my mouth to look in the mirror, I saw the filling, dangling from the tooth on the top of my mouth just above the broken one. I guess it did need an overnight to harden. This filling just happened to harden to the WRONG TOOTH.

After I chipped the filling away, we tried the REFILIT one more time with similar results. I'm pretty sure that the real live dentist has no reason to fear that his job will become extinct because of this innovation of technology.