Not summer camp

Today, I was going to write about McMurdo being like summer camp, only colder.  I've changed my mind.

To digress briefly, I had both a sadistic dentist (no novocaine) and a horrible orthodontist as a child.  The consequence--other than that I hate going to the dentist--is that I had dents on my front teeth that were stained and ugly.  About 15 years ago, I decided to get veneers to cover the damage.  Anyone who has had a veneer knows that they first shave down the tooth to a stub of its former self and then add a porcelain front.  If the veneer falls off, you're left looking like the witch in Snow White.

A month before I came to McMurdo, one of my two veneers fell off and I lost (swallowed?) it.   In a masterful feat of scheduling, I actually had it replaced with a permanent veneer before I went off to Galveston for training.  While there, I expressed my concern to our dentist, Bob Koff (see post of 8/15), that the other veneer was similarly aged and might be past its expiration date.  Without providing much comfort, Bob said, "Could be.  Nothing to do about it."

So yesterday, while biting into a particularly delectable and gooey meringue ("Antarctica, it's a harsh continent"), I felt something funny.  I looked down at my plate and there, poking out of the remaining cookie like a sail on a toy boat, was the older veneer.  Ugh.  I took it out, left the dining room, and headed to the clinic with Dean not far behind.

Chris was in his office.  I said, "Can we call, Bob?".  He said, "Probably not.  Bob is in Georgia--the country, not the state". We tried his phone, but no answer.  Shit.  Then, more optimistically, Chris piped up, "But he checks his email a lot."  "What time is it there?", I asked.   2:30 in the morning.  Sigh.  A few hours of feeling like a toothless hag later, an email arrived. And then a phone call.    What a saint!

Bob gave us two options:  glue on the veneer or make a composite.  To do the first, he related, is not as simple as replacing a crown.  Crowns have metal and cementing is simple; anyone can do it.  Veneer replacement is a bit more complicated, involving both cleaning off old cement on tooth and veneer, treating the veneer with both hydrofluoric and phosphoric acid, etching the underlying tooth and gluing with a different bond that requires light curing.  I felt a bit queasy.  This was not going to be a walk in the park.  The second option, making a fake tooth out of composite, was a no-go for me.  I am not an artist and if my talent is 2 out of 10, Dean's is in the negative territory.  I asked about a third option: waiting a bit and taking the next available plane to New Zealand to see a real dentist* (see footnote).  Bob did not recommend that approach.  He felt, for a variety of reasons, it should be done promptly.

So we chose option 1.  Chris, Dean and I convened in the dental room and scouted around for all the things Bob said we needed.  That took about an hour of mayhem.  Then, we tried to figure out how to use the dental equipment: the chair, the air and water compressors and the chairside mobile cart, etc.  Lets put it this way. I couldn't even figure out how to use the sink.  Hopeless.  Fortunately, we really didn't need it.  All we needed was the porcelain repair kit and that we were able to find.

The directions posed more problems.  First, they were printed in about 4-point font.  The manufacturer must expect all dentists read with their magnifying glasses.  Fortunately, I am so nearsighted, I can read what others can barely see.  Second, they were in dental jargon and required supplies that were not actually in the kit.  Again, Bob came to the rescue by email.  So we marshaled our courage and began.

I did the majority of the work (cleaning my tooth in front of a mirror, cleaning the veneer with the various reagents, etc).  Then Dean etched my tooth with phosphoric acid.  Chris basically stood back and looked on with a mixture of amusement and horror.  After quite a while we managed to go through the steps.  It was clumsy but we put the veneer back in. 

Dean etching my tooth and me trying to keep phosphoric acid off lips and tongue. Chris
decided to photograph the moment.  I look happy, no?

AND, we did it wrong.  I immediately realized we had skipped an essential step and, this morning, the veneer fell out again.  In many respects, I was thankful because I had learned a lot the first time that allowed me to do better with V2.  So the veneer is now in, it feels good and doesn't seem to be moving at all.  It wasn't as hard to do as I had expected.  However,  I'm determined not to eat with my front teeth until Bob gets here in December.  Hmmm.   I do like those meringues.

Footnote:
*Apropos of the "real dentist", a friend, who shall remain nameless, is a radiologist.  A patient once arrested in the radiology suite and she yelled out, "Someone call a real doctor!!"  I know how she felt.