This house has TWO dishwashers, which is fortunate because one of them has already broken.

There kept being a lot of grit on the dishes, so Paul looked up the dishwasher manual online and found out how to remove the filters, and I was halfway through cleaning the disgusting-but-not-as-bad-as-feared filters in the sink when he discovered a crumbling plastic tube toward the back of the dishwasher. Looking into THAT, he found that it’s a part you can order and replace; all you have to do is turn the dishwasher upside down to get at it. Hm. And if you do it wrong, that’s the part that lets water pour all over the kitchen floor, or else lets it leak slowly for years until the floor rots away.

So. It’s a fairly old dishwasher and we haven’t been particularly happy with it (I STILL haven’t figured out how to load it efficiently), so we’re NOT going to test out our dishwasher-flipping abilities or our new homeowner insurance, and instead we’ll use the other dishwasher (a pain since it’s not in the kitchen, but certainly less of a pain than not having a dishwasher) while we look into replacing this one.

Paul did some research and was all set to order the top-recommended Bosch (not the super expensive one but a more mid-range one) from Consumer Reports when he noticed the reviews were basically split between 5s and 1s: some people love it and others just HATE it. The main complaint from the people who hated it seemed to be related to the racks not fitting dishes well. But the racks are adjustable, and so we’re wondering if the difference could be “people who figured out how to adjust the racks” vs. “people who did not”? And there was also one review that said something about the racks being made for “European-style dishes,” whatever that means, and another that said you really have to read the instruction manual because loading is not intuitive.

Well. I am wondering if you would like to tell me what dishwasher you have and whether or not you like it. I will tell you the one thing I want in a dishwasher: filters that are EASILY-ACCESSED and easy to clean. In our old house, the dishwasher drained into a garbage disposal; in this house, I have no idea where it drains but not through the garbage disposal.

Follow-up: the second dishwasher ran one load of dishes perfectly. Then, with the second load of dishes, it broke.

Elizabeth was measured for her scoliosis brace, and the brace was made, and then we had a fitting appointment that involved power tools, and now she is “weaning on” to the brace: wearing it for increasingly long sessions for an increasingly large total of hours per day. I meant to do a “What It’s Like…” post for the measuring and another for the fitting, but I forgot, and now already the details are fading.

The gist is that Elizabeth and I both found the measurement appointment very uncomfortable. She had to wear a semi-see-through extremely-clingy long tank-top that looked kind of like an extremely inappropriate dress; I could see her underwear through it. The technician doing the measurements was a man, and he had to do a lot of measuring with a tight measuring tape all over her torso, including her chest, her pelvic bones, and her butt. I was/am mad that they didn’t have a female tech for this. I sat there wondering how much education I would need to be the one to fill that gap.

The final straw was when he had to use a handheld device that touchlessly scanned her shape into the computer. She was positioned facing the screen, and her own 3D shape appeared on the screen as he scanned. Any color for this 3D shape would have been bad enough, but they made it beige. So basically it looked like her naked self appearing on the computer screen, in front of a man and her mother.

The only fun part was that she got to choose what the brace looks like: there were a bunch of solid-color choices and a bunch of patterns.

Elizabeth and I were talking about the appointment on the way home, and between us we easily thought of several ways it could have been less excruciating. One involves an invention (make a totally-hands-off measurement scanner), but the others are all doable right now:

1. Have a female technician. I don’t care if they need to offer full scholarships with pay to get women into this field in our area. FEMALE. TECHNICIAN.

2. If she has to wear a long tight tank-top dress for the measuring, fine. But could it be one we can’t see her underwear through?

3. Patient should be facing AWAY from the computer screen as the 3D scan is being done.

4. The 3D scan should appear in a NON-SKIN-COLOR such as green or red or purple, just in case the patient does catch a glimpse.

Anyway. To his credit, the tech seemed aware of the situation’s potential for discomfort, and made remarks intended to be reassuring: he made sure to tell me that he had an 11-year-old daughter, and he kept telling us what he was about to do and why he needed to do it. And he had a pleasing and non-threatening temperament/manner—almost apologetic. But all I’m really saying with this paragraph is that it could have been worse.

The next appointment was the fitting; that was 4 weeks after the measurement session and was with a different (but still male) tech. The brace had been made, and now a tech needed to make sure it fit Elizabeth well. He put the brace onto her and measured some things; he had her sit down to make sure it still fit well. He asked her if any places were particularly uncomfortable (hard to answer). He then took the brace off, brought it into an adjoining room, and there were power-tool sounds for awhile—maybe about 15 minutes. He came back, put the brace back onto her, checked it again, and said it was great. He said a lot of times a brace needs more adjusting than that (they allow 1.5 hours for the appointment), but that this one had been particularly well made.

He then showed me how to put the brace onto Elizabeth and how to take it off of her. He put two sets of marks on the straps: one set for now, and the other set to gradually aim for once she’s used to wearing it on the looser setting. He went over the weaning-on instructions. I’m too lazy to go fetch them from the other room, but it’s something like: the first 4-5 days wear it 1-2 hours at a time for 4-6 hours total; the second 4-5 days wear it 2-4 hours at a time for 6-8 hours total; and so on. She only has to wear it 12 hours total per day even at maximum, and we are almost there now; yesterday she wore it for 8 hours in one session.

She can remove it herself, so what we’ve been doing is I put it onto her before she goes to school, and then mid-day she removes the brace and leaves it at the nurse’s office. Then, depending whether it’s a day she needs to bring her trumpet home, either I go mid-day to the school to pick up the brace, or else she picks it up from the nurse at the end of the day and brings it home. Now she’s able to wear the brace for the whole school day so we ought to be able to stop these daily figurings-out, except gym class is still messing us up.

(She might end up doing her 12 hours/day at night, but she is supposed to finish the weaning-on period before she starts trying to sleep in it. The tech said that especially with kids, we want to avoid disrupting sleep if possible.)

Elizabeth said I could show you what the brace looked like as long as I didn’t include her face:

Not too bad. She wears a special seamless tank top underneath it (the tank top has a built-in flap that goes between her underarm and higher side of the brace), and after the brace is in place she folds the bottom of the tank top up over the bottom of the brace. Then she wears a regular shirt over it, and if you didn’t know she was wearing the brace you wouldn’t guess it. I can’t even tell, except there’s a little bit of a bump at the back/bottom of her shirt.

I would like to tell you about two housecleaning tasks I did, because in my opinion they are among the grossest and most thankless: I removed the toilet lids/seat unit (we have one like this that’s designed to be easy to remove) and scrubbed it in the tub, getting all the hinge areas that get so gross especially if you live with a lot of people who pee standing up; and I cleaned the small plastic trash can we use to hold the toilet brush and toilet plunger. Then I washed my hands up to my elbows, then I did it again, then I did it a third time, and then I went and lay down for awhile with a fan blowing on me soothingly. But it is so satisfying to have those two areas cleaned, and to think of not having to do it again for awhile.

We have had a new diagnosis in the family for me to fret about. At Elizabeth’s 13-year annual check-up, the pediatrician noticed her spine wasn’t straight, and sent her for x-rays. The pediatrician said sometimes nothing needs to be done other than keeping an eye on it.

But the x-rays came back showing a 30-degree curve, and the pediatrician said she should see a specialist. We had to wait weeks to see the specialist, and then it was for a 5-minute appointment: he shook our hands, tested her reflexes, showed us the x-rays, and said he’s referring her to the spine center of the big-city children’s hospital. He says she will almost certainly need a brace.

Did you read Deenie as a child? I read Deenie. I don’t remember a whole lot about it; it’s lumped together in my mind with a whole bunch of books about teen and pre-teen girls with various issues (The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, The Pistachio Prescription, There’s a Bat in Bunk Five, It’s Not the End of the World, Forever). But I do remember the part about The Brace. That book is probably my only encounter with scoliosis, and it did not leave a good impression of it.

Well. Presumably there have been some advancements since 1973. I am hoping that, as a group, we know something about this and can collect in the comments section the various things we know and have heard, either from our own kids’ experiences, or the experiences of other kids we know or are related to.

So far I have learned that my brother had mild adolescent scoliosis, which I hadn’t remembered at all. My mom remembers it was a 7-degree curve, and nothing had to be done about it; the doctor just kept an eye on it to make sure it didn’t get worse. It hasn’t been an issue.

I have also learned that a 30-degree curve is not great but not the worst; it’s “moderate” as opposed to “mild” or “severe.” I have learned that there are “S-curves” and “C-curves”; Elizabeth’s is an S-curve, so it curves one way and then back the other way. I have learned that the main concern is not the current curve, but rather that Elizabeth is in a rapid growth stage, and that the curve could worsen rapidly during this stage (already it went from nothing at her 12-year check-up to 30 degrees a year later). I’ve lightly learned (that is, I am not sure of this knowledge and don’t yet know how/if it will apply to Elizabeth’s particular situation) that the primary goal of bracing is to prevent FURTHER curving, but that bracing can also in some cases decrease the current curve; I have not learned if this is something they maybe only attempt in more severe situations. (Elizabeth is not having any pain or other ill effects from her current curve.) I’ve turned my eyes away from some of the possible lifetime effects of scoliosis.

I have learned that in the term “adolescent idiopathic scoliosis,” the word “adolescent” refers to when the scoliosis first presented itself, and “idiopathic” means there is no known family history of it and it just came out of nowhere (which is not uncommon for scoliosis) (but my brother DID have mild scoliosis, so I wonder if they’ll change that word after taking a family history). And I’ve learned that scoliosis is more common in children assigned female at birth than in children assigned male, and also tends to be more severe in children assigned female than in children assigned male. They don’t seem to know why, though I haven’t exactly gone rummaging through the scientific journals to see what the current thinking is.

That’s pretty much it. Right now we’re waiting for the children’s hospital to call us to set up her appointment. Adding to my stress is that it’s a DIFFERENT big-city children’s hospital than the one Edward goes to for his Crohn’s disease treatments. It would be so nice if she were going to that same familiar hospital. I’d been planning to call and get the referral changed—but then I did some online searching about how to compare hospitals and which were the best hospitals and so forth, and basically the one Elizabeth has been referred to is one of the highest-ranked children’s hospitals anywhere, and the one Edward goes to is not on the lists.

So. I guess I will think of this as an Opportunity to get familiar with another hospital. I will look on the bright side: it’s a little further away from the city center, so maybe the driving and parking WON’T make me cry! Also: the hospital Edward goes to has TERRIBLE food. Like, remarkably terrible. Like, they must be doing it on purpose. Maybe the new hospital will have better food.

My new replacement tooth is finally, finally, finally in place. The implant is healed; the crown is on; it is over.

The procedure to install the crown was a little icky and unpleasant, but endurable. I would have enjoyed a tranquilizer or vodka tonic first, but it was okay without. First the dentist unscrewed the little screw in the center of the implant (the implant, if you remember, is the part under the gums); that little screw was only there while the implant was healing, and could now be removed. In its place the dentist screwed in the abutment, which if I’m following this correctly is the piece that sticks out from the gums and is for the crown (the part that looks like a tooth) to attach to. In between removing the screw and putting in the abutment, they disinfected the center of the implant, and there was the unpleasant taste of whatever they used for that. After the abutment was in, they took an x-ray to make sure it was in there correctly.

The abutment has to be locked permanently into place, and this was one of my least favorite parts: the dentist has to screw it in until it snaps twice, which means it’s locked. So there was a lot of weird intense pressure (no pain, but it wasn’t comfortable) that felt really clearly like it was Inside the Bones of My Face (it didn’t hurt in a GUMS way at all), and then I had to anticipate a SNAP, which was indeed startling when it arrived but I’m sure glad the dentist mentioned it ahead of time or I would have thought something had broken. Then we repeated the pressure/anticipation/snap. He gave me a mirror and I could see a teensy metal paddle-thing sticking out where my fake tooth was going to be. I looked very odd, like a James Bond villain.

The dentist and assistant spent some time making sure the crown would fit, was the right color, etc. Ahead of time the assistant told me that it does occasionally happen that a crown arrives and it won’t fit or it’s the wrong color, so I was not getting my hopes entirely up that things would go well, but they did: everything fit right and looked nice. The dentist had to press HARD on the crown to make sure it fit right; this was gums-painful, exactly as you’d expect if someone pressed something hard against your gums. He also used one of those pointy little metal tools to trace all the way around the crown to make sure the gums weren’t getting pinched underneath, and this was painful enough that I think he should have warned about it, but maybe he didn’t know. It was like when they use the pointy thing that measures the depth of your gum pockets, except it was sliding along the gum instead of just poking down and back out.

Then there was some messing around with whatever adhesive they needed to use. Then the dentist put the crown in place for real, and there was a repeat of the pressing-hard-on-gums pain and also the tracing-around-with-pointy-thing pain, twice, plus sharp picking sensations as, I suspect, he was removing traces of extra adhesive. Really, it was quite uncomfortable, but I was bolstered by the knowledge that we were WRAPPING THIS UP and the whole lengthy process would soon be complete.

He gave me a mirror, and I had a TOOTH. The gums around the tooth were startlingly white; he said that would fade very soon and it did. He said it might be slightly sore for a day or so and it was, but nothing that really bothered me or was a problem for eating—more like An Awareness of the area. I still have an Awareness feeling even a week later, but less.

Then the part I wasn’t expecting: the assistant had me bite down on that paper stuff that shows them how accurate your bite is, and then the dentist had to spend some time drilling to make my bite fit right again. He took some off my front BOTTOM teeth, which surprised me. He also took some off the new crown. It didn’t hurt, but if you hate even non-painful drilling then you know what it was like, and it was a particularly screamy drill, and then I had to keep re-biting the paper, and my mouth was trembling enough to make this difficult, and I was not having a good time.

But then it was done! It was done and I walked out without having to make any more appointments!

The tooth felt very weird in my mouth for awhile, and still feels a little weird nearly a week later. My tongue keeps exploring it as a foreign object, but each day it feels a little less foreign. I am not used to biting with it, since I’ve been biting without it for nine months; when I do bite with it, it feels weird, like there is something in between my tooth and what I’m biting—but it is feeling less weird each day. It feels odd to brush it, and a little unpleasant—again, like I’m brushing something in between my tooth and the toothbrush. I hate flossing it: the floss has to go much further up under the gumline than usual. But I will get used to that.

I had a little lisp/whistle the first few days, but Paul said no one could hear it but me. I’d gotten used to talking without the tooth or with a flipper (the temporary/removable fake tooth) that has a section covering part of the roof of my mouth, so talking with regular teeth again was strange. When I go out somewhere, I keep thinking “Oh no! I forgot my tooth!”—and then realizing the “forgot my tooth” feeling (from having nothing against the roof of my mouth) is now invalid.

I am very happy it’s done, and I’m glad I had it done, but is there no way technology could advance in this area? That took a REALLY LONG TIME. I had the tooth pulled LAST SEPTEMBER. It is now JUNE. That’s a whole SCHOOL YEAR.

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I applied online for TSA Pre-Check. Today I went in for the interview portion.

I’d made an appointment, though walk-ins were allowed; I could make the appointment online from pull-down menus (first choose a date, then an available time on that date), which I greatly appreciated. I checked in at the desk, and they asked what identification I’d brought, and I said “Driver’s license and passport,” and she said I would only need the passport, and she asked to see it. Then she asked what payment I’d brought (the site says they very much prefer credit cards), and I said “Credit card,” and she asked to see it. She typed a few things into her computer. Then she handed me back the passport and credit card along with a little dry-erase card on which she’d written my arrival time, and she told me to keep all three of those things together and handy. She led me to a waiting room, and I sat down. I was the only one there, but in the next ten minutes two more people arrived, both walk-ins.

I found I was more nervous than I needed to be. I was a little shaky. I had the “near a police officer” feeling, where even though you are completely innocent you feel like you might get in trouble unexpectedly, or get barked at for doing something wrong. (I have that same feeling going through airport security, which is one reason I want to get Pre-Check: to make that experience shorter and easier, with less time waiting in line feeling anxious beforehand.)

I waited about ten minutes, but that meant I was called in right at my appointment time; I’d arrived a little early. The man who called me in was friendly-looking, in his 60s or so, not intimidating in stature or manner. He asked for my passport and credit card and praised me for having them ready; I gave credit for that to the woman at the front desk who’d told me to keep them out. He said my information aloud as he entered it into the computer, and he said my date of birth with the wrong year; I don’t know if that was a mistake or a test, but I corrected him. Then he asked about my middle initials, but he did it in a slightly odd way; like, say my initials were A. and B., what he said was “What’s A.B.?”—and more like “What’s aybee?” Not “What do A. and B. stand for?” or “What are your middle names?,” so I wondered if that was another little test; either way, I knew the answer and gave it.

There was a screen facing me, and he had me confirm my address, confirm the answers I’d given on the online part of the application (had I been convicted of a crime, had I lived at my address at least five years, was I a U.S. citizen, etc.), confirm my previously-used names, and enter my Social Security number. The email address field was filled in, but hidden (like when you type in a password and it only shows dots); he asked me to tell him my email address and he entered it in the “confirm email” field.

I’d been worried about the fingerprinting part of the test. Long ago when I wanted to work at a daycare, I had to go get fingerprinted at the police station and they had a terrible time getting good prints: they did it again and again, used up sheet after sheet of paper, called in someone more experienced, consulted a supervisor, pressed my fingertips so hard they hurt, and they STILL didn’t seem satisfied with what they got. For the TSA Pre-Check, they had a little screen for me to press my fingers against—no ink. First I pressed my thumbs on the screen, and he said we were waiting for a green light and two beeps, and we got a green light and two beeps. But then I had to put the four fingers of my right hand on the screen, and we tried again and again and couldn’t get the green light and the beeps. He had me press down harder; use my other fingers to help press; move them to slightly different positions; hold my hand flatter—all to no avail. Then we tried the left hand, and it was the same thing over again. He said it would be okay, because we did get good thumb prints and those are the important thing; he said at worst the failure to get good fingerprints might mean a small delay in the application being approved, but shouldn’t result in a rejection or anything.

Then he ran the credit card (TSA Pre-Check is $85 for five years) and had me sign for the charge and also to say I had not told any lies in the interview. He gave me back the credit card and my passport, and said I should receive an email with my Known Traveler Number (KTN) in about a week; he gave me a receipt with information on it in case I didn’t hear back in a week. He said the email would be the only thing I’d get: no card or anything, just an emailed number; so I should print out the email and put it in a safe place when it arrived.

So! Not terrible at all. I think the whole thing took a little over ten minutes, and quite a bit of that was the part where we were struggling with my fingerprints. There was no trouble with my middle names/initials—but they only looked at the passport, not the driver’s license AND passport.

I have a mammogram later this morning, so right now I am not wearing a bra and not wearing deodorant and not feeling happy about either one of those things. Before the mammogram I have a dentist appointment, which is making things even more complicated: I will be very close to two people working in my mouth, and I will not be relaxed about that, so there is the possibility of stressy sweating. I know I could wear deodorant and wipe it off before the mammogram, but I worry that I will wipe insufficiently, leading to mammogram error and then, soon after, to avoidable death. But there will be people working in my mouth, and I will be very close to their noses. And I have to do at least one goop-tray mold today, which is stressful all by itself. Maybe I should just put on deodorant.

Plus, I feel all wrong because I have my hair down: usually I twist it along the side and bun it in the back, but that doesn’t work if I have to put my head back in a dentist chair. And I’m wearing a tank top under my t-shirt to compensate in part for the bralessness, and I don’t usually wear tank tops. So I just feel wrong all over.

(later)

Whew. All done. Appointments over, deodorant on, tank top off, bra hooked on, hair up, everything put back as it should be. (I mean “as it should be” for the way I like it. Another person’s Everything As It Should Be list could very well be tank top on, bra off, hair down.)

Today was my second-to-last appointment for my tooth replacement, which has now been going on for just under eight months and has another four weeks to go. I could manufacture an entire living child from scratch, OR I could have one tooth replaced: same timeline. (I mentioned this to Edward, who remarked helpfully that it would be possible to save considerable time by doing both things at once.)

I think the most recent step of this tooth process I mentioned was the implant being put in. I had to go back a week later for her to make sure it looked nice and was healing well, and then I went back nine weeks after THAT for her to confirm that it was fully healed and ready for the crown. Then I had to wait another month before my dentist had an available appointment, which was a little irritating but let’s not dwell on it; I mention it only because it affects the timeline and theoretically the whole thing could have been done a month earlier BUT AGAIN LET’S NOT DWELL ON IT.

Today’s project was to take molds of my bottom teeth (two different kinds of molds: one goop-in-a-tray kind, and one where she used what looked like a caulking gun to custom-apply the goop), and one mold of my upper teeth. The mold of my top teeth made me very nervous because I have been known on occasion to gag until I throw up a little tiny bit, and that is gross and also I find it excruciatingly embarrassing even though everyone is always nice about it. This time I reminded them ahead of time that that sometimes happens, and then it didn’t happen, so I missed my opportunity to act like it never happens, but on the other hand I got extra credit for it not happening.

The dentist also unscrewed something from the implant. The implant, if you remember, is the name of the narrow metal post that is mostly hidden under the gums (until I had this done, I thought “implant” meant the fake tooth, but the toothy-looking part is called the crown). The implant is hollow, I guess, and then there is a screwed-in piece filling up that hollowness while the implant is healing; when the crown is ready, the dentist unscrews the middle piece and replaces it with a screw that sticks out (called an “abutment”); then the crown can be put onto that screw. Is that clear? I’m not sure that’s clear. It doesn’t matter, though, since neither you nor I has to do this procedure to anyone else: all I had to do was lie back while the dentist removed the middle piece, put in the abutment to test it, took an x-ray to make sure the fit was right, and then took it out again and put the filler back in. This felt very weird but not painful: quite a bit of worrisome pressure at times (like when he was expending considerable effort to get the filler piece to start unscrewing, and when he was making sure the abutment was in there tightly enough), and also the luckily highly-unusual sensation of something being SCREWED UP INTO MY FACE BONES, but nothing hurt.

Then they held up some fake teeth in various colors and took photos of them held up against my other teeth; this is so the lab that manufactures the crown can do a color match. And then I was released into the beautiful spring weather…and drove directly to my mammogram, which went as usual. So nice to have that over with.

I have been so sad and anxious about getting my dental implant, and now it is done and I am so much happier. Plus I tried nitrous oxide and now I have a new life plan involving lots of dental work.

To review, I had the tooth extracted back in September, and a bone graft put in. In early January the oral surgeon had me come back in to check the bone graft, and it looked good so I went back near the end of January for the implant. (Before having this done, I thought “the implant” was the fake tooth, but the implant is the name for the screw-thing they put into the gums for the crown to attach to; the crown is the part that looks like a tooth.)

I chose to be unconscious for the tooth extraction, but chose nitrous oxide for the implant, partly because I was less upset about the second procedure than the first, and partly because I wanted to try nitrous oxide after hearing all the varying reviews. I am happy to report that my experience was on the positive end of the spectrum: it was MARVELOUS. The only downside is it felt a little like having too much to drink, in that I felt self-conscious about how I was coming across to others; and I was uncertain about successfully coordinating, for example, the assigned complicated task of breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. And my mouth was numb and I didn’t have my glasses on, so I had the unpleasant sensation of being semi-detached from most of my senses. But that was like 10% unpleasant combined with 90% Very Very Pleasant, so in short I am a fan and plan to see if I can get it for all future upsetting dental work, such as crowns. I HATE getting crowns, and I have four of them and two of them are getting ready to need replacing.

I will see what I can remember about getting the implant. They first gave me a dose of antibiotics and asked me to confirm some information. I had to have someone with me to drive me home, since I was having nitrous oxide. They put a shower cap thing over my hair and disposable booties over my shoes and a big disposable sheet over the rest of my person. They took my blood pressure and asked if I was nervous (yes), and put an oxygen monitor on my finger. At this point it was still just me and the person who administered the nitrous oxide. She then put a little cup thing over my nose and gave me some oxygen, which just felt like a cool nose breeze.

Then the nitrous oxide, and she asked me to tell her when I felt a little tingly. I get a little paranoid about things like this: I worry that I am highly suggestible and will say I feel something when there is no way I could be feeling anything yet, and then they will be like “Gotcha!” Which of course they would not do. Anyway, I felt nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, maybe I feel something I can’t tell, no it’s nothing, nothing, maybe I’m imagining something, no it’s nothing, nothing, nothing, OH there it is! Just sort of a tingly feeling, as advertised, and then maybe a minute later a definite headrush/buzz/high feeling. Really great. She told me she’d leave it right there, but would crank it higher when we got to the point where the oral surgeon was putting in the Novocaine. And I was not nervous at all! Why had I been nervous! Everything was great!

She said it would work in a “rollercoaster” fashion: first I’d feel it, then I’d feel it less, then I’d feel it more again, and so forth. She said this was partly the nature of the medication, and partly because when it’s working well, people forget to breathe through their noses, and then they sober up a bit and remember. And that was how it worked for me: at one point I thought she had turned it off and started the oxygen (which she’d told me she’d do at the end), but then after a few minutes there was a renewal of the headrush/buzz/high feeling.

The oral surgeon and her assistant came in right after I was starting to feel the nitrous oxide. The doctor asked how I was and the person handling the nitrous oxide said, “She’s doing great: she loves everyone,” possibly because that’s exactly what I had told her a minute earlier. The doctor put numbing gel on a Q-tip and propped the Q-tip between my lip and my gum. Then there was some talk about needles, and I floated right through that. Ha ha! Needles! So funny! I felt very much like laughing, but stifled it. The doctor picked up something I couldn’t see, and the person handling the laughing gas said she was going to give me more now. I felt GREAT, and also like I might pass out but in a very good way. I felt as if I could definitely fall asleep if I wanted to, but I didn’t want to miss any of this legal high. There was some sort of needle sensation I guess but who cared! Then the doctor said “I’m afraid this one is a rough one,” and her assistant said, “Deep breath in now,” and I thought, “Wheeeeeeeeee ow ow wheeeeeeeeee isn’t it funny how that theoretically hurts quite a bit and yet la la la wheeeeeee this is GREAT I feel WONDERFUL and also I think I successfully obeyed the instruction to breathe in, so that’s good!”

Things are a little muddled in my memory. There was a lot of messing around in my mouth. Some gauze and some suction and so forth. I couldn’t really feel anything because my mouth was numb and because I was quite high. I think the doctor might have tried one kind of implant and rejected it for another kind, because she said something about magenta being more feminine but the other was a better fit; I don’t remember if she put one in and then took it out or if she discovered this some other way. And the doctor showed me an implant and it took a moment for me to understand she was talking to me so I could tune in and take a look at it, and I remember seeing a little grey cone/screw thing. I don’t know if this is the same one I have now or not, because the part that shows is a gold/bronze color, and I also remember her saying something about gold being fancy and that now I had some bling, so maybe she tried/considered three different implants. I remember hearing, with no concern, some debate about which one to use, and there was an x-ray and then some more work, and then after awhile there was another x-ray, and then some more work, and then another x-ray. Sometimes I let my eyes close; sometimes I looked around to help stay awake to appreciate the high. There were at least two occasions when something like a tiny jackhammer was doing something on my gums; I assume putting in the implant? It didn’t hurt, just sounded/felt a little weird. Mostly sounded: I wasn’t feeling much in the mouth region at all. I couldn’t even tell if my mouth was open or closed.

A few times the assistant said I could close and swallow, and I tasted a lot of salt. I would think this meant blood, except it didn’t taste entirely like blood, and also they were frequently using a sprayer and a suction thing in my mouth, and also I wouldn’t think blood would be quite so salty. It tasted more as if they had been using salt water in the sprayer. I still wasn’t sure I was able to successfully follow instructions, but each time I did seem to be following them, at least enough to satisfy. They asked for my flipper (the temporary tooth on a retainer-like thing) and I was able to tell them it was in the pocket of the cardigan I’d given to the nurse, but I was a little surprised that I was able to do that. The surgeon put the flipper in and said, “Yep, that’s going to be in the way,” and they discussed whether I had an appointment scheduled with my dentist, which I did. I continued to float/enjoy. The person handling the nitrous oxide asked how I was doing, and I said “Great!,” and she said “Mom knows best, right?,” and I didn’t know why she was saying it, and I thought she was referring to herself as “Mom.” (Afterward I remembered that we’d talked about my mom saying nitrous oxide was great and that I should definitely try it.)

At one point the doctor said, “Oh, sorry,” and I had no idea what she was talking about but thought it was very important to indicate to her that I TOTALLY got it, so I nodded and half-winked and tried to look knowledgeable/forgiving. Once she said, “Oops, let’s not drown you,” and I had no idea what she was talking about. Several times she asked if I was okay and I said “Yes” and “Lovely!” She said unfortunately she couldn’t send me home with a canister of the stuff, and I laughed and then had trouble stopping laughing but did manage it.

Then the assistant was wiping around my mouth with a damp cloth and the doctor was saying things had gone really well. I tried to nod understandingly. She and the assistant left the room. The person handling the nitrous oxide said she was going to switch me to oxygen, and in the next couple of minutes I started sobering up and regaining control of my various senses. I thought, “OH, I see, my mouth is hard to control because it’s all NUMB! I get it now!” I shifted my arms and legs for the first time since starting the nitrous oxide. It felt kind of good to not be so out of it, though I also felt like I would like to breathe through my mouth to extend the nitrous oxide as long as possible.

She gave me some after-care instructions: don’t eat unpasteurized dairy for a couple of days; use ice for 20 minutes out of every 60 for the first two days, then switch to heat if necessary; don’t eat spiky/crispy things such as chips and nuts for a week; chew only on back teeth, no biting with the front teeth (I haven’t been able to bite with my front teeth since September, so no problem); swish with salt water; take ibuprofen; etc. I felt about 75% able to receive such instructions, but she gave me a piece of paper that repeated everything.

The whole thing from antibiotics to paperwork was less than an hour. I didn’t need gauze or anything afterward, because the bleeding had already stopped. The oral surgeon had said something earlier that baffled me but did not cause me to want clarification: she said she had a “perfect-size punch” so that there was hardly any bleeding and no stitches required. Let’s not think too much about what a “punch” might be, or how it might be used.

This is when I started feeling some pain, and the pain increased quite a bit over the next five or ten minutes. She’d told me to take four ibuprofen when I got home, but I had some in my purse so I stopped at the drinking fountain in the building’s hallway and took them right away. The pain increased to the point where it was hard to think about other things. It wasn’t excruciating, but it was very ouchie/distracting, and I felt squinty and bad. My other teeth were hurting too, even though they shouldn’t; I remembered the orthodontist long ago telling me that teeth are particularly prone to “sympathetic pain.” My mom and I had talked about stopping at a store on the way home, but I was too uncomfortable.

Instead my mom drove me directly to the dentist, where I had an appointment an hour later to get my flipper (the temporary fake tooth on a little retainer-type thing) adjusted to make room for the part of the implant that sticks out of the gums. I’d been worried the sticking-out part would be gross and upsetting, like an eighth-inch of screw protruding disturbingly, but it’s just a little nearly-flat gold circle on the gum. It’s almost pretty—as if I’ve gotten my gum pierced to match my earrings. And I can barely feel it with my tongue, even though the tongue exaggerates the size of everything: it’s much flatter and less noticeable than the stitches were, back when I had the tooth extracted.

It was about a twenty-minute drive to the dentist, and by the time we got there I was starting to think I might be feeling better. By half an hour after that, I was DEFINITELY feeling better: it was partly the ibuprofen but also I think the implant just stopped hurting so much, because when the ibuprofen wore off I still didn’t have any pain. Maybe just a slight tender feeling. It was like stubbing your toe, where first it hurts tremendously but then the pain drops off sharply and it doesn’t usually hurt later, or maybe it’s just a teeny bit sensitive. It was as if my gums were saying “AAAAAA INTRUDER AAAAAAAA NO THIS IS NOT RIGHT AAAAAAAAA THERE IS A GIANT THING HERE THAT SHOULDN’T BE HERE oh actually no this is okay this is fine no problem we can make room.”

The dentist carved a teensy bit out of the flipper, and then it fit great. The whole thing took about five minutes, and that included chatting about how the implant procedure had gone. My mom dropped me off at home and I put a bag of frozen corn on my face; I felt like I didn’t need it (no swelling, no pain) but didn’t want to be the idiot who thinks she’s fine and doesn’t follow the instructions and then gets a swollen face. The next day I did notice maybe a tiny bit of swelling, but maybe I was imagining it. Mostly I looked a little pink from the ice pack.

I feel VERY HAPPY about having this step done. I hope there are no complications, because if there aren’t, then all the stressful/hard/painful parts are over: all that’s left is having a crown attached to the implant, and I can have that done in about ten weeks, and then life can proceed. And I will not think about how the oral surgeon said it looked like the same problem might be happening with my other front tooth (probably injured at the same time and in the same way, whatever that time/way was) and we will just have to wait and see.

I’m not going to put any gross pictures in this post. Some people like to see stuff like that, and some people don’t. So in THIS post, the only pictures will be of the temporary-temporary tooth (which looks like a transparent impression of my teeth but with a tooth painted on) and of me modeling it. If you would like to see two head-and-shoulders pictures of me grimacing/smiling without one of my front teeth, and a closer picture of my bared teeth so you can see what the extraction site looks like two days after extraction (not gory, but it’s not what you’d call a beauty shot), I have posted them here: Pictures of Swistle’s Missing Tooth.

To review, my body had for reasons unknown decided that the root of one of my upper front teeth was An Intruder, and was steadily working on absorbing it. I found out about this situation five years ago when I had a routine dental x-ray. The dentist sent me to an endodontist to see if the tooth could be saved with a root canal, and the endodontist said definitely not. The dentist said there was no rush and we could keep an eye on it; every so often he took another x-ray and confirmed the steady but slow loss of the root.

In the last year or so I started having a periodic non-painful-but-not-pleasant-either tingling sensation around that tooth and decided to act sooner rather than later. (The danger in waiting is that the area can suddenly become painful or infected, and then it’s no longer as relaxed/uncomplicated a procedure; also, if some of the root is missing/soft, the tooth might not come out in one piece.) I had a consultation with the oral surgeon who took out Rob’s wisdom teeth, because I love her; she’s a small, intense, birdlike person in a lab coat and headlamp, and she’s quick with a dry joke, and she seems like she really LIKES her job. She confirmed that there was no hope of saving the tooth (“Well, that’s a darn shame,” she said, looking at the x-ray), and the only question was When; she agreed the earlier the easier, so we set a date.

I consulted with you guys about whether to have laughing gas or general anesthesia, and you were ALL OVER THE SPECTRUM and there was NO CONSENSUS AT ALL. (Part of the issue, it appeared, is that “general anesthesia” is not a specific term at all, and can mean many different medicines at many different risk levels.) I went with “There are so few opportunities in life to nope-out of unpleasant experiences, so I’m going to take this fine offer.” But I worried I’d wake up feeling terrible and barfy like I did when I had my wisdom teeth out.

Let’s see, I think that catches us up to the day of the extraction. My appointment was in the late morning, and I couldn’t have anything to eat or drink for six hours beforehand. I drank a fair amount of water the night before, as instructed. In the morning I kept getting big rushes of nervousness. I leaned heavily on my “In x hours this will be all over and I’ll be back home” Coping Thought.

I was supposed to arrive half an hour before the appointment. Shortly after I arrived, a nurse called me back and gave me a large dose of amoxicillin. Because I’d opted for general anesthesia, she also confirmed that I had someone in the waiting room who could drive me home and stay with me for the rest of the day, and she asked for a phone number where they could reach Paul later on to check on me. She also asked me what I was having done, probably to make sure we BOTH knew the score. Then I went back to the waiting room.

Nearer my appointment time, the nurse came to get me again. In the hallway, she had me put one of those blue shower-cap-like things over my hair, and she put little shoe-sized ones over my shoes. She brought me into the actual room after telling me not to touch anything in there that was blue; when we went in, I saw various surfaces covered with blue paper sheets and lots of medical instruments. At a sink there was a cup with what looked like four or five doses of mouthwash in it; she had me rinse and spit, rinse and spit, rinse and spit for just over a minute, to sterilize my mouth. She’d mentioned that it would taste bad, but I’m used to mouthwash (I don’t like to brag, but I can go the entire 30 seconds) and it basically tasted like a slightly more medicinal mouthwash, with less burning.

She had me sit in the exam chair, which was like a usual dentist’s chair. She adjusted the little head support to be comfy, and she took my glasses. Then we were joined by the person who handled the anesthesia (she was dressed like the other nurse, and I don’t know if you have to be an anesthesiologist to do any sort of anesthesia or if there are different job titles that can do different levels of anesthesia, but I will just call her the anesthesiologist). She tied a piece of elastic around my upper arm, had me make a fist a few times, and praised my veins. (I get a lot of praise from medical professionals about my veins. I’ve come to look forward to it.) She put in the IV. She put one of those little oxygen things in my nose and hooked the tubes over my ears. She put an oxygen monitor on my finger. She put three sticky circles on me, but I forget where (upper chest? arm? neck? non-upsetting places like that). The nurse covered me up to the waist with a big blue sheet. I was starting to feel Very Medical.

The oral surgeon came in and chatted pleasantly for a minute. She listened to my lungs and heart. She said to the anesthesiologist, “Three fentanyl.” We talked another minute or so; she was just going over again what we’d be doing. Then she paused, looked at me evaluatingly, and said, “You should be starting to feel some effect of the medicine—like, a little blurry.” Almost immediately I DID feel a little funny, but not enough to rule out Power of Suggestion. What I remember saying is that I wasn’t sure if things were blurry because I was feeling the medicine or because I had my glasses off. I don’t know if I said anything else after that or not, but what felt like the exact same second I was wide-awake and feeling normal and fine, but I was also tipped way back and the doctor was working in my mouth. This was puzzling. I glanced over and saw the nurse, and she said, “The tooth’s out! It went great!” I could not see how she could be right about this, and wondered if I had misunderstood. It didn’t FEEL as if the tooth were out, or as if enough time had passed for that to have happened, or as if I’d even been unconscious yet, but I couldn’t get my tongue over there to investigate.

The doctor said, “Hi! How ya doing?” and I gave a thumbs up. I heard the anesthesiologist say, “Do you want more propofol?,” and the doctor said, “No, I think she’s good hanging out with us at this point, right?” and looked at me and I gave another thumbs-up. What she was doing in my mouth was a little uncomfortable, but I felt cheerful and chill and like I didn’t really care. I remember this from the last time I had fentanyl, which is when I was in labor with my firstborn. It did approximately zero for the quantity of pain, but it made me feel as if the pain were over there somewhere and kind of interesting to think about.

Anyway, the doctor was trying to get the implant in. She worked on it for quite some time, trying different things, but the implant couldn’t grip in: it just kept spinning like a stripped screw. This was a little uncomfortable. “Darn,” said the doctor, eventually. “Well, we tried.” So instead she did a bone graft. This part didn’t hurt: it was like the part of getting a cavity filled when they’re packing the filling-material into the tooth. Just a light pressing sensation.

Then she sewed it up. This hurt a little, but not much, and I didn’t really care and I wasn’t grossed out. I thought, “Huh! That kind of hurts a little!” and “Funny how it’s exactly like sewing cloth!” Just kind of la la la hanging out feeling interested and perky. The doctor was meanwhile explaining that although it was disappointing that we couldn’t do the implant the same day, in the long run the bone graft would make it a way stronger and longer-lasting implant: we’d trade three months of waiting-time for years or even decades of implant-life. She said she didn’t think I’d need/want to go under when I came back to have the implant put in, but that we could discuss it when I came back in a week for her to check the extraction site. She added that it was good I’d gone out for the tooth extraction, though, since it had proved to be “a bit tricky. I had to really TWIST it!” (My plan is to get the nitrous oxide for the implant: I’ve been meaning to try it, since it sounds as if the effects vary considerably from person to person, and I didn’t want to try it for the first time for something like an extraction. An implant seems like the right low-stakes moment.)

The doctor left. The nurse gave me gauze to bite on. People started removing things: the IV came out, the oxygen came out, the oxygen monitor came off, the sticky things came off, the blue sheet came off, the shower cap and shoe caps came off. The nurse and anesthesiologist were standing by in case I had trouble standing up, but I didn’t: I felt totally normal and okay and non-queasy and non-groggy. I walked to a chair in a station in the hallway where another nurse was waiting. She changed my gauze, asked how I was feeling. She went and fetched Paul, and then she gave him all the instructions; they were the same sheet of instructions they’d given me ahead of time, so everything was familiar. The only thing that was new was that they told me how much over-the-counter painkiller to take (I was a little disappointed not to get any of The Good Stuff, but I have to admit I didn’t need it). I was very, very, very annoyed with Paul afterward, because I SPECIFICALLY TOLD HIM ahead of time to please take notes during the instruction session because I might not be with-it enough to hear/remember everything, and he did not take any notes, and so then afterward I remembered they’d said I should take three extra-strength ibuprofen every six hours, and Paul said he was absolutely certain they never mentioned ibuprofen but then couldn’t say what medicine they HAD mentioned, though he did remember they’d mentioned SOMETHING—just definitely not whatever it was I remembered. Really, I’m still annoyed about this. He had ONE JOB. Well, two, counting driving me home. AND I reminded him ahead of time. What do I need to do, hold his hand around the pen?

Anyway. The nurse checked the gauze and said I didn’t need to do any more gauze, so that means the bleeding had stopped enough. I could taste a little blood in my mouth, and my upper lip was a little numb and there was a wearing-off feeling like when I have novocaine, but not as much as usual: like, as if I’d had one small shot of novocaine instead of four big ones, or whatever. We drove home, and I made some scrambled eggs for lunch so that I could take some ibuprofen, and then I took ibuprofen. I’d thought I would be kind of out of it for awhile like Rob was after his wisdom-tooth removal, but I felt normal and did normal things. I did take a nap in the afternoon, but I think that was more because I’d had a little trouble sleeping the night before.

I was supposed to put on an ice pack for twenty minutes out of each hour to prevent/reduce swelling, and I had two bags of frozen peas ready to be called into service; later I wished I’d gotten corn instead, because I could smell the peas. I was supposed to sleep with my head elevated, and I don’t like sleeping on extra pillows so instead I’ve been sleeping in a recliner; I like to sleep there sometimes anyway. I have had hardly any swelling; whether because of peas/recliner or because of the particular tooth/situation, I don’t know. I think I had big chipmunk cheeks when I had my wisdom teeth out, but that was four impacted teeth not one emerged tooth, and I didn’t use ice packs or sleep in a recliner.

The extraction site doesn’t hurt much. I’ve taken ibuprofen a few times, but just two of them per dose, and I haven’t been counting the hours until I can take more; it’s more like I think, “Hey, that’s starting to ache,” and then realize it’s been ten hours since I took anything. The worst part is that there is a tiny piece of stiff surgical thread sticking out, and the feeling of it grosses me out so much; and every time I eat, food brushes against it. This morning I finally used my tiny pocket-knife scissors to carefully, carefully snip off some of the extra, and that was some relief, but there is still some left (I didn’t want to cut it too close to the knot and then have to explain to the doctor why I thought any of this was a good idea), and I really hate it, and also I found two more pieces back where I can’t see them or get to them. My tongue keeps going over to see if they’re still there, but any touching/wiggling of the threads makes me queasy, so I and my tongue are at odds in our wishes.

I’m also very aware of the feeling of the two extraction-flanking teeth against the inside of my lips. I should ALWAYS have been feeling those teeth since THEY haven’t moved, but I suppose now I’m feeling their exposed corners or something. It feels distressing, like I have new fangs or a fresh overbite or something.

One of the biggest problems was that I’d planned a bunch of soft foods without realizing that if I had the bone graft I wouldn’t be able to have dairy for four days. Or rather, I DID realize it, but the paperwork said “no uncooked dairy” and I thought that meant, like, no unpasteurized/raw dairy. But when the nurse was going over the after-care instructions and said no uncooked dairy, Paul said, just confirming it, “Like, no unpasteurized/raw dairy?,” and she said, “No: no uncooked dairy. You can have pasteurized dairy, but only if you heat it very hot first. Like, you can have cream in your coffee, but microwave the cream separately first.” Which was confusing, because that’s what I thought pasteurization already did: heated it very hot. And so what I’d planned on was cottage cheese, and meal-replacement shakes made with cream, and ice cream, and pudding, and smoothies, none of which seemed like they could be heated nice and hot, or at least not without making me feel a little nauseated thinking about it.

So that was a little discouraging, and I’ve been having trouble finding things I can eat. Applesauce. Scrambled eggs. Instant soup with those tiny noodles—but it can only be warm, not hot, per instructions. Coffee, too, can be warm but not hot. I’d thought that since it was a FRONT tooth, chewing wouldn’t be much of an issue, so I’m surprised to find it’s quite difficult to chew. I tried having a salad last night and eventually had to give up. I couldn’t seem to herd the leaves effectively.

All of these things pale in comparison to how I feel about the way I look. As with most things involving physical appearance, I am sure that my own feelings about the way I look dwarf the feelings OTHER people have about the way I look: like when someone else has a pimple and wants to stay in a dark room until it’s over, and I am like “You can barely even SEE it, stop drawing people’s attention to it by mentioning it!” But in our culture, missing teeth are fairly rare, particularly missing FRONT teeth. It IS a little shocking, it really IS, it’s not just me feeling self-conscious. It looks as if I blacked out a front tooth for a costume, and it’s approximately that weird to go out in public like that. I don’t think the photos I took really capture how shocking it looks in 3D. It seems as if it would startle/scare people about as much as a large bloody cheek wound.

Before I had the tooth pulled, I had an appointment at the dentist to make me a temporary-temporary tooth. I’ll have a longer-term temporary tooth (a “flipper”—like a tiny retainer that attaches to the two flanking teeth and holds a temporary fake tooth in place) at the end of next week, but this was to tide me over until then. (Normally they could have made the flipper ahead of time, but my dentist’s original plan was to attach my own removed tooth to the implant, which they couldn’t do until the tooth was extracted and they’d had time to modify it. I assume that plan is now off, since the implant couldn’t be installed after all—but maybe now they’ll make the flipper out of the extracted tooth? I don’t know.) They took molds of my teeth, and from those molds made a thin clear piece that covers all my top teeth. Have you ever had a custom whitening tray made, one that fits your particular teeth? That’s the same thing as this. Except that there is a fake tooth painted on to the inside of it:

When I wear this, it takes away the Startle Factor:

(My face is so red because I recently had a bag of frozen peas pressed to it. I did not sufficiently plan out this photo session.)

It’s pretty okay, especially in a small photo. But in real life, or closer up, it doesn’t look right. There’s a black gap where the painted-tooth doesn’t quite cover. And more importantly, the tray gets spit in it. And since it’s normal for spit to be blood-tinged for a few days after the extraction, what happened when I put the temporary-temporary tooth in was that the tray immediately filled with blood, masking all my front teeth, giving what I think I can safely call a far-worse effect than the missing tooth. If you need to schedule a tooth extraction, may I suggest scheduling nearer Halloween?

Also, the little tray is uncomfortable, and if I wear it too long the extraction site starts feeling kind of icky and achy. I can’t talk clearly with it in, which is tiring. If I smile naturally, my lip goes over the top of the tray and gets stuck there. I wore it to my first ceramics class (more on this another time) and I didn’t feel like myself at all: I hadn’t realized how often I smile until I couldn’t do it, and I was minimizing my words because I was hard to understand and self-conscious about the tray, and I was worried the tray was getting bloody without me realizing it, and by the time class was over I was exhausted from the effort of being Normal Human.

Last night I was moping and Paul said, “Is there anything I can do to make this better?,” and I said, with one hand covering my gappy mouth, “No. I can’t eat right, I can’t talk right, and no one can look at me. It’s just going to be miserable for awhile.” I can’t believe there’s more than a week until I get the temporary tooth, and even THAT is going to be on a little flipper I have to take out when I eat. But it should be more comfortable to talk and smile, and that will be a big relief.

Oh, one interesting thing is that I have a faint, dream-like, non-distressing memory of having felt a very intense but non-painful/non-scary feeling where my tooth was. Propofol affects memory as well as consciousness, so I’m interested to know how awake I was during the extraction. That is, to me it feels like I skipped it; but if I could go back and tune in at the time, would I be more aware than I REMEMBER I was?

Well. As mopey as I am, I am also very glad to have this first step over with: it was by far the most distressing part of the entire procedure to contemplate, and now it’s done.

Update on progress a little over a week later.