King Me! Oh, wait, Crown Me!

Okay, so a while back (like 2 years ago, sadly), I lost the filling from my front tooth.  Hating dentists, I took my sweet time going in to get it fixed.

Unfortunately, after the dentist saw the condition of my mouth, there were other things that needed to be taken care of first. He worked up a Treatment Plan that was... hold your breath... $9,000. As in 30 times the cost of my AMC car back in the day. As in 15 times the cost of my monthly mortgage payment. 

Because it wasn't too expensive, I had four broken teeth pulled (which sadly, leaves me with only 27 adult teeth. So redneck). But the rest was expensive. I needed crowns. Lots of them. Possibly root canals.  I put my head right back in the sand and pretended I had no problem.

Gross, right? Get thee to a dentist!

But I did, because, eventually, another front tooth (though, a different tooth) chipped, and I was beginning to look a bit methed out. I put on my grown-up hat, pulled up my big girl panties and scheduled an appointment to get my front teeth crowned.

When I booked the appointment, I was told that it would take 1-2 hours, so I booked it for early in the morning, to give me time to get back to work.

I showed up around 8:30 for my x-rays and got a cool panoramic shot taken.

In case I'm ever murdered, here's some dental records to identify me by

I was brought in to the room and told to sit - there are no doors on any of the dental rooms. It's kind of weird. 

Goodbye, hideous meth smile!

At least there's a somewhat nice view. I've seen other dental offices that have TVs mounted to the ceiling. I get bushes.

Usually I can see birds and squirrels too

After Dr. S reviewed my x-rays, the assistant got ready to go. 

I decided to show you the crown stuff, not the drilling/picking stuff - no nightmares!

I also got ready to go. I learned this trick from my dentist when I was a kid - distraction is your friend!  I put on my sunglasses because the overhead lights are bright, and I put in my earbuds so I could crank up music and try to drown out the sound of the drill. It doesn't drown everything out, but it's better than nothing.

If I can't see it or hear it, it's not happening

I told Dr. S why I was doing what I was doing and said that if he needed me to do something, to tap me on the shoulder.

They got down to business, and while both of them were wonderful, this took FOREVER. I guess it was because they were doing three teeth instead of just one?

I was still there FOUR hours later.

Ugh, I'm so hungry, I'm about to pass out, too

But, all the grinding was done. Finally.

Check it out - I'm BatBoy!

He gave me a break to relax my jaw before it was time to make the impression for the temporary crowns.   To make the temps, he puts some sort of blue goo on a spatula and tells me to bite down on it. Yummy.

Bite down!

It was cool to see it when he took it out, though.

Finished dental impression of my top teeth

While I sat and chilled out, the assistant created the temporary crowns sitting next to me. Really kind of weird.

Headphones back in - she had to use the drill to shape the teeth

Once made, she would put them in my mouth to test the fit, then take them out to make adjustments.

She got a kick out of me asking if I could take a picture of them, so she hand-modeled them for me before calling Dr. S back in for the final fitting.

(They were really bad fake teeth)

Once he was happy with the fit, I finally had a temporary crown for the three front teeth and I was able to go back to work. I'll return in three weeks to get my permanent teeth!

And to think, it only took 7 hours to do this, and cost $1000 for all this torture!