I have fillings in pretty much all of my back teeth, upper and lower. I have always had good brushing habits, engrained as a child, which have become excellent over the last eighteen months, but when I was young I had the occasional cavity, which of course added up to my current “lots o’ fillings” situation. I don’t get new cavities any longer, but every now and then one of the fillings will go bad and I’ll get it replaced.
This weekend, I was chewing gum and sucking on a tiny mushroom-shaped sweetart-like candy when something crunchy happened. Really crunchy. My first thought was that the candy had something hard in it. Then I realized I was chewing on bits of tooth. Eww.
On inspection, the outer wall of one of my back teeth gave way and now you can see a hole on the side, revealing the filling underneath. It’s not noticeable unless I pull my cheek back and show it and it mostly feels the same with my tongue, just a little rougher.
Fortunately, the filling is intact and there’s no pain, so it’s not an emergency. I will have to get a crown which will have the big benefit of finally getting rid of that filling forever. Unfortunately, since it’s not an emergency, I have to wait over two weeks for an appointment. In the meantime, I have to eat carefully and have given up gum, lest the rest of the tooth shatter and things get really uncomfortable.
Thank science for modern dentistry. Not too many years ago I’d be stuck with a bad tooth (or no tooth) for the rest of my life.
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