18 May 1999: Wisdom

On Monday I finally made an appointment with the oral surgeon my DMO recommended (i.e. accepted) in February, and today I went. It strikes my Kaiser-inured soul as suspicious that a doctor might have an appointment available so soon, but then I reminded myself that not everywhere double-books and under-staffs, that the physicians who cared for me growing up were available when I needed them and not three weeks from now. What a treat.

My sniffles and achiness still lingered, and in the cool morning air, I huffed through the achiness, which dissipated, and my nose ran, which was disgusting. Afterward, though, at work, I felt great. Not great. No longer sick. A weekend of lassitude interrupted by a couple of walks did not restore wellness. A single six-mile bike ride did.

In the early afternoon, sun at its peak, heat and summer and light and green all conspiring in my favor, I pedaled toward the dentist. While I knew where his building was on Colorado Boulevard, I wasn't sure about how to approach it from the residential neighborhood behind. But you can't get lost in Denver if you've got any sense. The roads are almost all straight so your sense of direction is never addled.

Except in this neighborhood, the roads actually curved. What a treat! With mature trees! I had never been on its side streets and found them quite appealing, for Denver. RDC pointed out to me later when I told him that this is a possible house-hunting neighborhood that it looks more like Connecticut than most of Denver. Well, yes. The streets not straight, the trees not saplings. The houses were still mostly brick instead of wood though. But yes, I know what I like, and that's New England. So it goes.

When I scheduled the appointment I asked if the building had a bike rack and was told no but that people often locked their bikes to a railing outside. Once there, I saw that said railing girded the stairs and the landing. Hmm. But the landing stretched a few inches beyond the railing, so I tossed the bike to the outer edge and locked it up. It was at the back of the building: less traffic means fewer eyes to tempt with the shiny thing but also fewer witnesses if need be. I checked on it a couple of times, and at the end of the visit, the attendant said she had checked it a couple of times too. Service!

And speaking of service! I was there an hour and a half, a full third of that with the surgeon. The right wisdom tooth, p.c.-ly called the "third molar," shouldn't cause too much trouble, but the left one appears in x-rays to be married to the nerve that runs along just above the jawbone. There's a strong risk I shall temporarily lose sensation in my cheek and chin and a slight risk of permanent loss. The tooth will have to be extracted eventually, before it threatens to rot out its neighbor, and it's best done while me and my bones are younger. So I'm taking the risk. RDC can nibble on the other jawline if need be, but I have faith that need won't be.

The hour and a half was to ensure I made an informed choice, to explain the risks and benefits, to instruct me about what to do on the day of. It has been a long time since I have benefited from the complete attention of medical staff devoted to the whole patient and not treated like a single, discrete, annoying body part.

Humans and their teeth. Silly us. Our teeth, their size or number, didn't shrink with our jaws, which is why our teeth crowd one another and get misaligned and probably facilitate mutual decay. I bet orthodontists oppose evolution on the grounds that as we grow fewer teeth to fit our jaws, they'll be redundant. And will have to devise other methods of torture for their powerless, underage victims. Actually they might enjoy that.

Me? Bitter? No.