JPG

it's an interesting story, if you have a minute.

when i was a kid, my orthodontist was my best friend's dad, so i got it all - except headgear, god i'm glad for that. anyway, one of the many treats i endured was a rapid expander. for those of you who are blissfully unaware of this particular torture device, it's a large spring that goes across the roof of the mouth, anchored on the first molars (second tooth in from the back, if you've had your wisdom teeth out). every week or so, you take a little silver pin, stick it in and crank it. the spring expands and the upper jaw is forced to comply. tons of fun.
so, there are some cells that live in our mouths, specifically designed to break down our baby teeth and make room for big girl teeth (or big boy teeth for you men-folk). for most of us, those cells, having served their one specific purpose, die away. but somehow, the trauma of restructuring my jaw was too much excitement to miss. apparently, those little cells woke right up and got back to work.
and ten or so years later, while dining at a burger king off i-90 in chamberlain, south dakota, i discovered that my tooth was hollow and, now, broken.
today was the terminus of a two and a half year, $5000 journey to repair the work of that cursed expander. it turned out that both upper first molars had been eaten away from the inside out. i learned that this process, called internal resorption, is actually somewhat of a dental roswell. some dentists don't believe it's real! several of the specialists i saw promised to talk about me at the next convention as the first case they had ever seen of double-internal resorption. i'm very proud.
i had the option of getting implants to replace the stumps i had removed, but decided the $20,000 would be a bit, ahem, hard to swallow. so i went with bridges. the picture above is my second and last. it now lives in my mouth and will never again see the light of day. and i'm told they will survive cremation.