My Broken Tooth

 I broke a tooth today. I've done that before; I inherited my mother's horrible teeth, and if not for crowns I would have the smile of any drug-addicted homeless man in the street. But the tooth broke, rather than the crown coming off. I've had that happen a couple of times, and it's nothing. After all, the tooth is just fake, held on by cements similar to the ones I use for my models.

This time, however, I have to have the root extracted so I can get the modern version of a bridge. And this new dental experience has reduced to me to jelly, this not helped by the condescending, sexist comments of the dental assistant.

I have a long, longe memory, my first recollections coming from age 2. I have well-developed, detailed memories from age 3 onward. I vividly recall being at the dentiswt as a child, when it was fashionable to fill baby teeth. I can recall being left there by my mother as a 14 year old, on the day I was paid for working as 'the 5th ace' at Camp Magar, and I had enough money to buy a new cymbal. I had that 18 inch cymbal for the next 50 years, until replaced just a couple of years ago.

I had braces, the all-American way to a perfect smile, that devastated my soft teeth. I had 60 cavities filled by the time I was 21. I broke my first tooth when I was 20. There are 5 surfaces to fill on any tooth- occlusal, buccal, lingual, medial, and lateral; most of my teeth have had all of them filled.  That I know that tells you how much dental care I have had.

I went without dental care as a medical student; I didn't have insurance, and I didn't want to bother my mother. By fourth year I had a hole in an incisor so large you could see through it. It's a miracle I had any dates at all. I had early periodontal disease by age 31, and worked hard to successfully stop it. Absence of periodontal disease is a condition for transplant. When I was told my gums were fine in 2008, I wept in the chair with relief.

My tooth broke and fell out while eating lunch. Fortunately I spat it out with the bone from a small lamb chop at Acropolis, a local Greek restaurant (Lamb lollipops, an appetizer, served on a bed of fries). I went right to the dentist, and my crown is cemented (glued, let us not pretend) in place. I have been told not to bite into anything and to chew only on my molars. There is no guarantee it will stay in place, either.

I came from the gym, from a workout with a trainer, trying to get myself in better condition. I've tried to make my life in better condition all my life. If I get goo grades, I will be free. If I get into medical school, if I am an academic physcian. If I only do this, this something,  I will no longer feel trapped in my past, living the nightmare of screaming, hitting, fear, blood, and death. One day, I will do enough, be enough. Like Proximo, I will be given a rudius, touched on the shoulder, and be free.

But I looked at my gap-toothed mouth, and all I saw was my mother in Bryn Mawr hospital, after she burned the house down smoking while blind. I saw her terrible mouth, without her bridgework, gums bare, only a few remaining teeth, her withered body, uncombed white hair. And I returned to see my mouth, lesser in degree but no different in kind, the avatar of my failure. My life is just icing and fluff. I am condemned to a mouth like hers, a death like hers, toothless, demented, and alone. And for this, I had a second transplant, to die without teeth, with no children to mourn, no grandchildren to succeed me.

The dental assistant laughed at my fear, told me, knowing my profession, that lots of women had tolerated worse pain, belittled my fear, knowing nothing of my past, my present, or what the broken tooth represents.

When I'm done my breakdown, the 8 shots of vodka, the valium, the hysterics, the depersonalitzation, I will go back and have my new experience, a dental extraction, dry-eyed and straight-backed. I have failed to rid myself of my past. All I can do is face the degradations and physical pain of the present and revel in what pleasure remains to me.

Ted