Goodbye, #31. I Didn't Know You Wanted to Leave Me. I Thought It Was Remnant from Covid...a Mouth Sore. Nope. You Were an Abscessed Tooth

And here I was thinking that the string of grey crowds was subsiding, and I was heading to the up and up. 

NOPE. #31, the tooth before #32 (I still have two of my wisdom teeth), fractured where the root canal was done several years ago, and became infected. Slowly, the bacteria has been eating at the jawbone, so when a gumboil formed on the inside of the tooth by the gum, a mouth version of Covid toe, an infection trying to get out. That explains why two weeks ago, my bite didn't feel right - the infection was trying to eject a tooth...one that was dead, crowned, and defunct anyway. 

So, at my annual cleaning yesterday, Dr. Kudish said, "This needs to be pulled right away. She sent me to an oral surgeon and a couple pinches of novocaine and 45 seconds of pulling, #31 was gone. I wanted to keep him to make a necklace but they didn't allow that (I was channeling Jake who still has one of the teeth he had pulled - of course, he's a dog). 

I was sent home with cotton, strict orders not to eat much, no to chew, no to suck a straw, and definitely not go line-dancing with chickens. I had to simply chill out, biting on cotton until the proper blood clot formed....which took all night. It just kept bleeding.

Joy. 

I'm just glad it was in the back of my mouth and not in the front. I'm also glad for insurance. My dentist told me one price, and Dr. Sood offered another (his actual cost was one fifth of what I was told it would be). When you your mouth is worth more than you actually are, you pay attention to the price tags.

The hardest part of it all was I lost a day. I had a day full of plans, goals, and joy, and it turned into another 18 hours of falling behind. It is what it is. It's feeling like I'll lose all of today, too.

What else can I say?

RIP, #31. I have to wait 6 months before possibly having a fake tooth put in. We'll deal with that day when it comes.