An Example

There is a saying about everyone being useful, even if only as a bad example. I'm the dental bad example. I visited an endodontist and my regular dentist this week and it was bad news all around.

First, let me explain that, as a child, I spent hours and hours reclined in a dentist's chair having fillings put into my teeth because of rampant decay. Then, as a young adult, one of my first jobs was chairside assistant to a children's dentist. I learned on the job, and the most important thing I learned was that tooth decay is preventable. It may sound bizarre that I only learned that as an adult. I did brush when I was a child, but I also ate lots of sweets and --- it turns out -- our family has genetically weak teeth. All of my brothers and sisters also have many restorations.

Luckily, I did two things to avoid passing this on: 1) learned how to care for teeth correctly (fluoride treatments, flossing and brushing, limit sweets) and, 2) married someone who brought good teeth to the gene pool. So, due to a minor bit of fanaticism (can you have minor fanaticism?) on my part with the teeth hygiene and sweets-limiting & the lovely dental inheritance from their father, our children have mostly excellent teeth with very little need for restorative dental work.

And this is good for many reasons --finances, appearance, personal comfort. But the principle reason this is good is that once you start making holes in the enamel it is all downhill from there. A cavity will be filled and eventually it'll deteriorate into needing a root canal and a crown. Then sometimes those fail too, and you'll need to have a rotted root structure extracted and a bridge built. Which puts undo pressure on the adjoining teeth after so many years, which can crack their delicate structures and lead to more avenues for bacteria to invade the root systems and make little pockets of infection around the bottoms of those roots. Then you must remove the bridge and allow the cracked tooth to try and heal while you take antibiotics. Or if you can retreat the root canal, you may resolve the infection, or perhaps you just have to extract the tooth after all because it is too difficult and iffy to retreat such an old root canal with scar tissue like that.

Now all of this takes decades to occur. The first little cavity starting in the permanent teeth when you're about 14 and too lazy to brush every night, and chewed sugary bubble gum a lot or ate snacks like bread and butter with sugar sprinkled all over it. Then it culminates one week when you are 57 sitting in the dentist's chair while he and his assitant nearly dislocate your jaw while trying to dismantle and remove the "permanant" bridge so that the supporting teeth can get exotic treaments. And you sign the consent/estimate for dental work to be done over the next six-eight months that cost more than any of your last three cars.

But, having the two missing (one gone, one soon to be gone) teeth replaced with implants beats the heck out of just being a toothless old lady, or putting up with dreadful dentures. Technological advances in the dental world are a wonderful part of modern life.

About that example: brush, floss, avoid a constant diet of sweets. You don't want to get the holes started in your teeth. My dentist explained today, "The trouble with restorations is that, while it solves one problem, it starts another. Every hole in your tooth enamel, even the carefully drilled and filled ones, create a pathway for bacteria and it is all downhill from here." Even if it takes decades, it will occur.