Good Teeth

One of these days, the YourMcHenries shop will come out of it’s short break, and I will be able to get this sticker as a gift for my therapist. The sticker contains the essence of this tweet:

I, and a large portion of The Internet love this joke. Because we have many things in our life that are both normal to want and feel it is possible to acheive like this… especially if we are neurodivergent and were formerly labeled as “gifted”. The paradigm has helped me realize the relationship I have with my teeth.

I recently had a lot of expensive dental work done. A root canal that was old enough to get cheap car insurance (over 25) ‘failed’. It did it slowly and under watch, with my dentist having noticed a void under the crown several years ago, but basically said “it’s best not to mess with it unless something starts hurting or we start seeing evidence of failure near the root”… and the evidence near the root showed up (thankfully without hurting) and thus lots of expensiveness happened.

While I was at the Endodontist to see if we could re-treat the old-enough-to-vote root canal with the realization that over 25 years ago, a root looks like it was missed… I finally settled on my aprehension: The endodontist feels like Tooth Detention. Like I was in purgatory for too many bad grades in dental hygiene/genetics. When the reality is I grew up on well water and wasn’t eating like a medieval brit/german and was consuming sugar in my teens instead of booze as my winter calorie.

The endodontist and dentist were kind of happy, because I have a good chance of saving the tooth, which means staving off bridges and/or implants and other things that cause massive drama later. I’m just happy nothing hurt, and that I had enough money and insurance to cover procedures when needed, and that I am stalwart enough to go to the dentist every 6 months even though I REALLY hate it because, well, I never get a good grade.