Teeth to the Grindstone

Every once in a while I consider all the inventions that have revolutionized my life. Cell phones, computers (word processing, in particular--remember typewriters?), the Internet are certainly right up there. But yesterday, after a long afternoon in the dentist's chair, I place Novocaine and the high speed dental drill pretty high on the list.

On Wednesday evening, I broke half a tooth eating salad of all things. The tooth had a huge filling and half of it broke right off--on the inside of my mouth which was lucky since it would have looked pretty awful. An emergency call to the dentist resulted in a late afternoon appointment yesterday where I knew I was in for a lot of drilling. I've done this before.

Suffice it to say the activity required three shots of Novocaine and a bit of emergency gum surgery since the tooth broke close to the gum line. All of which was painless, thanks to Novocaine. All things considered, it was fairly quick as well.

Today my mouth is very sore--as he promised it would be--but functional. I could not even imagine having these procedures performed without Novocaine.

Horses need dental attention as well. Their teeth have to be shaved down to accommodate the bit and an abscessed tooth in a horse needs prompt attention. In fact, horses have been known to lose races due to issues with their teeth and mouths that are usually only discovered after the fact. Veterinary dentistry is an important specialty. Its fair to say that teeth and feet are the cause of the majority of medical problems in horses and it is probably no coincidence that hoof and mouth disease is viewed as a major epidemic.

So as much of an annoyance as it is, dentistry in humans and animals has come a long way in doing what it does best--save teeth. For that, I, for one, am extremely grateful.