Not giving up M & Ms!!

Many moons ago I gave up cigarettes.   Would have been June of 1987 to be exact,  but who's counting? There were day's when I really enjoyed smoking.   Couldn't suck in enough carcinogens.  Unfortunately,  it's a rather stinky business,   and one January day as I stood with a few other smokers on the front porch of my brother-in-law's then brand new house,  shivering and smoking in the brisk Canadian air (um,  it's was something like -18°C)  I began to formulate a plan to give them up.   Not cold turkey mind you,  but it had to end.   Got tired of the morning cough,  smelly clothes.  The whole ordeal.
Oh,  and by the way,  if you smoke and have a cough,  and you think you can blame it on anything but cigarettes,  you need to give yourself a shake.
Fine.   Not here to preach.

I also realised that I have a slightly addictive nature.  Can't even touch a cigarette,  'cause I know somewhere in my pea brain, there's "something"  that still clambers for a hit of good ole nicotine.  Travelling Companion can actually have a smoke once in awhile.  God bless her.  Not me.  If I had one,  I'd be hooked.
 I'm not going to go so far as to say I'm "hooked"  on M & Ms,   but there is quite often an open bag of them sitting in one of the all too easily accessible kitchen drawers.  I try to follow the five o'clock rule,  and keep my mitts out of there until at least after dinner.  That's pretty weak I know,  but it's all I got.

 Now let me tell you a little story.

 Once upon a time,  when we had that brief year or so in Puerto Rico,  we'd go home to Canada every so often,  and if it was time for a check-up,  we'd take advantage of the opportunity to go to the dentist.  I wasn't overly keen on going to a dentist in Puerto Rico,  and we always figured if we got sick,  it would have been better to drag yourself onto a plane and head for Canada.    There had been some,  shall we say?  "stories"?  of people's hospital and dentist visits that were not exactly confidence inspiring.

I'll leave it at that.

 So on one of these dentist visits,  our then dentist kept eyeing this one particular tooth,  and kept referring to the notion of something called a "root canal".   I'm not going to explain the workings of dental procedures here,  but suffice to say a root canal is a way to save a tooth.    Failing that,  you need to yank it out.
 I wasn't too keen on the sounds of either of those options,  and I figured if it wasn't bothering me,  then to just 'leave well enough alone' would be a perfectly viable alternative.
 Fast forward a year or so,  and I've returned to work as a Head Caretaker,  and on a regularly scheduled visit,  he once again wants to deal with this one tooth.

Man,  dentists can be persistent,  can't they?

Coincidentally it was some time in October.

I just figured he was padding his pension,  since by that time his son was going to take over the practice from the Dad.  (seriously,  he's like a carbon copy of the Dad,  but that's another story)
 Once again,  I chickened out.
 One fine day in December though,  right around the stroke of noon,  I could have sworn that someone was trying to pry open my skull with a dull hoe.  Took all of five seconds to realise I was heading to the dentist,  and in fairly short order.
 Fine.   Antibiotics,  Tylenol 3.   Root canal.   It's a multi visit process,  trust me.

 Now let's talk about the "son". 

 Lately,  he's been obsessed with another tooth,  since something showed up on the x-ray back when we were home in May that didn't look "quite right",  but we had agreed that it would be something to be dealt with in December,  when once again we're home for a visit.
  The appointment has already been made.

 You may be starting to figure out where I'm going with this?

 See,  on Saturday (it was after five!)  I just happened to be nibbling on a couple M & Ms,  and happened to chomp down on one obstinate little bugger and well,  what followed was NOT a good sensation.  I thought I had done a number on the crown where I had had the emergency root canal.    I rummaged around in there with my tongue and everything seemed fine.  It still is a bit tender,  even though the theory is that the nerve is supposed to be dead and all.   Not long after that though,  when I was eating a normally harmless cracker,  I suddenly realised I had what I thought was a seed in my mouth,  promptly pitched it in the garbage,  but within a heartbeat realised that I had broken a tooth!!

What the ??   (is this being brought to you once again by the letter,  "F"?)

Cr*p!   The "suspect"  tooth was the one directly below the crown,  and the chomping of the M & M had weakened the one side,  and it simply came apart.

 *sigh*


I fully expected it to hurt like hell,  but it's only slightly more sensitive to hot and cold.  My teeth have always been sensitive to cold,  so that's not a stretch.
 So now I have an appointment with some dentist here in Wienerland on Friday morning. He was recommended to us by our Relocation Lady,  but we had never up to this point seen any pressing need to pay him a visit....until now.
  I think I'm actually more nervous about filling out all the forms in German than anything else. 

 If I thought I could somehow put it off until we got back to Canada,  then that would work for me,  but the mere notion of ending up with some sort of infection gives me the royal willies. 
 Pretty sure there's at least one loyal reader out there that knows all about that....right?  Grasshopper?





 And the number for today is....60.






Once again.  Happy Thanksgiving.

(lucky buggers)



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