Modern Dentistry Is Amazing!

 Today I had the tooth that could be saved fixed. What they did today used to take a couple of months. This took 2 hours!

The blue line points to the screw-on nut that is keeping the dental implant covered until I can afford to get that tooth made.

The black line points to the crown they did today. I know... best tooth in my mouth, right?

It used to be that you had to get the rot drilled out of the tooth and filled. Then they would take an impression. That would be sent to the lab. In about a month a temporary crown came back and that would be fitted, trying to fashion it so that your bite wouldn't be altered. Then it would go back to the lab again. The final crown would come in another month, and it might be really good or not. And it was usuallly gold. I have a couple of those.

Of course, I had a lot of crowns on my front teeth before the partial plate was made. If you missed the whole long, sad dental saga of my life, and care, you can click the link. The point is, I've been subjected to a lot of bad dentisry, and some good but still brutal dentistry over the last 69 years. This was quite different.

They do almost none of that anymore, except drill and fill the bad tooth if needed. It was needed. But the filling material is some newer product that they squeeze in with something like a pastry bag. No more scooping and tamping until they think the crevices are filled.

Then...and this is the best... no more impressions that make you gag. The tech uses a small, hand-held 3-D scanner and just keeps waving it around inside your mouth until the computer builds an accurate picture of your teeth and gums.

This is that part of my lower jaw with the cover on the implant post (the round thing). The white part is the dentist's first go at computer-generating the crown. There was a previous view without the crown that tells the computer how to make it fit on the old tooth. The purple is just like you remember... it's where the tooth is going to hit the upper teeth, so he took a little bit off that.

They also do a scan with your mouth closed, so they can get the accurate bite. And the details of my partial plate are rendered quite accurately.

A machine grinds the shape of the cap out of a block of lithium disilicate. Then they check that for proper fit and decent bite. At this point, the crown is very fragile.

But, it's actually a type of porcelain. So then in goes into a kiln for about 20 minutes and comes out hard and perfect. One last fitting, glue it on, and out the door. I think this is the only crown I've ever had made that didn't mess with the bite. And no restrictions- I can eat and chew as desired right away.

Basically, not painful at all. They use a numbing jelly before they inject the... whatever it is. I'm sure it's not novacaine any more. It had all worn off by about 1 pm, and the only consequence was a tiny bit of a headache.

I am in awe of the speed, efficiency, technology, and painlessness of the entire process.

As a reminder, this is part 3 of a 4-part, expensive project.
1. Remove broken molar- last fall
2. Replace that hole with an implant- over the winter
3. Crown on the rotten tooth next to that one- today
4. Crown on the implant- as soon as I can save enough money.

I am blogging early today because I have a meeting later, and I'm going to take a short walk on the way to it. Most of what I did today was dentist and prep for the meeting.

Later:
Miles walked in 2026: 303.2
NCT miles walked in 2026: 114.7

North Country Trail, Lake Co, MI. North from 40th St for 1.25 miles and back. 2.5 hot, humid miles.

See Scouting Out the Dental Landscape

And He Keeps on Ticking!

  Long day. We just got home. But everything went well with Josh's procedure. Praise the Lord for one more good report for our miracle boy. It took a little longer than expected and then they made him lie still in recovery extra long. But he's "all fixed." This procedure was to cauterize an extra bundle of nerves in his heart that competed with the bundle of nerves that is supposed to control the heartbeat. It's amazing what they can do now, with very little invasion. This is all done by going in through a vein from the groin. Actually they used both sides, but it's still almost "no big deal," these days. He needs to be calm for a few days, but then he shouldn't have this irregular heartbeat problem any longer. This was done a Butterworth Hospital in Grand Rapids. I was very impressed with the set-up, the communication, and even the food at the hospital. We were given a prep/recovery room that was ours alone for the entire day. No sharing of public spaces. We were allowed to have food in there, and they did everything except the actual procedure in the OR right in that one space.

There is no other news. This was all day. I could have taken my computer if I'd known there was a space I could have worked without distractions, but I took a book to read, so that was OK, too.

See some Joshua history

The Full Seed Tick Saga

 
I'm telling this story only because it may help someone in the future. It was exactly three weeks ago today that Marie and I got into the "seed ticks." The story is still not over, but I may have turned a corner.

For reference, we got into these "seed ticks" exactly three weeks ago. I'll retell the story, as I told it on Facebook, so if you recall parts of it, just skip those. At the very end of our hike that day we had to walk through a grassy area to get to the car. Immediately after getting in the car my legs began to burn. I said to Marie, "See these little brown dots? They burn. I can flick them off."

Since we were hiking in a part of the country I'm not totally familiar with, I assumed I'd found some new kind of plant material with an irritating seed. I proceeded to brush the little light tan dots off my legs and onto the floor of the car. The spots continued to burn. Later, back at the campground, Marie found she had some too, but hers weren't bothering her at all at that point. We still had some on us, even after showering. Later that evening, I was beginning to think something was fishy, as the burning was creeping higher than the edges of my shorts. I pulled one of the dots off my tummy, and with a reading magnifier, I could tell it was moving, but not any details. We got my botany magnifier which is 30X power. That's when we could tell these were ticks. But ticks with only six legs, probably dog ticks. So we went hunting for information on line. The first stage after egg is a larval tick, sometimes called a "seed tick," and they only have six legs. OK, now we knew what we were dealing with, but we were not happy.

I kept a few stuck on tape. I can't get any better picture of this, but you can see that the dot is less than a millimeter long.



We'd already showered, but we went back to the showers, stripped and searched each other. We scraped ticks off with a knife, and also with a kitchen scrubby. We showered again. I could easily tell where the ticks were by the burning. Marie still wasn't feeling anything.

We had to buy tick pesticide spray and treat Marie's car, and the inside of the trailer. We also washed all the clothes and bedding and fabrics they had touched. We must have been successful, because we did not pick up any new ticks from any of these secondary sources. Just forhe the record, we bought Hot Shot Tick and Lice Spray. It actually didn't smell bad, and the odor dissipated quickly.

So, here's the thing. I can not seem to find the same web site again, but I have found some others (credible ones) that say the risk of acquiring a disease from a larval tick is very small, because they have not yet had a blood meal. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and maybe Babesia can be transmitted from mother ticks to the eggs. But none of these were attached to us for 24 hours. Most, not even 12. And those diseases are not prevalent in Kentucky.

But apparently some people react more severely to the bites and the neurotoxin the ticks inject. Let's be clear. I thought I had hundreds of bites. But then I counted one patch on my thigh, and there were 100 just there. I think we can safely say I had at least a thousand. This is my leg three days after the exposure. Maybe you can't really tell, but it's pretty much raw with adjacent bites.



We got a prescription for prednisone, and also were taking Benedryl. I've never been able to take much Benedryl, but I kept pushing the limit of what I thought I could take because the burning and itching was beyond endurance. We also used cortisone cream right on the skin. By the third day, Marie was itching too.

I've definitely not felt well off and on, and I think it's from this allergic reaction to so many bites. Please don't start diagnosing from afar. I've had no fever, no symptoms of any of the nasty diseases, just a general malaise that is a typical for me "reaction" to something that my immune system isn't happy about.

We were on Prednisone for over a week and then kept up the Benedryl for a few more days. I finally cut it out because I wasn't sure if I was reacting to it or the tick bites.

Near the end of our time together, we also tried benzocaine (sold as Solarcaine and Lanacaine) spray. Well! That worked for a few hours on me while the "freezing" effect was active, but when it began to wear off, I ran to the shower and scrubbed like crazy. My reaction to that was not good. It burned like a chemical burn. I couldn't stand that at all.

Although I absolutely believe I'm in no danger of contracting any of the nasty things ticks can carry, my reaction to the bites themselves has been pretty spectacular. Because they inject an anticoagulant as well, after a few days pinpoint bruises began appearing around the bites on the flabbier areas of my skin- like my thighs and upper arms. I looked like I was taking blood thinners. Well, I sort of was!

Sorry to do this to you again, but here is a thigh this morning, THREE weeks later. If I scratch, and get the histamines all aroused, the bite sites still jump right up and get rashy. That said, a couple of days ago, things calmed down from burning to only itching. I can pretty much stand that. And, yes, I've been doing some scratching. You'd have to anesthetize me to prevent all of that. Luckily, I don't get infections easily.



I am covered in bumps from my feet to my neck. But they seem to be finally drying out, and I can ignore them most of the time now.

I can only compare this to chiggers, which I've experienced twice, but the itching only lasted about 3 days for that. I don't wish this on anyone. It's been pretty awful.

That said, I did even less today than yesterday. No apologies. Maybe tomorrow I'll get my act together.

	See Yikes! In December?
if you like this blog, click