Relief!

As I have mentioned before, I think, I've had a tiny bit of tooth pain around my (one) filling site so I finally put on my big girl panties and made an appointment and went to the dentist. I am embarrassed to admit it had been four years since I'd been in for a cleaning and a check-up. I have no real excuse other than to say finances dictated the money I might spend on a dentist visit for me get diverted to different funds. I had no dental insurance after all, and the $140+ cost of a visit was more than I could manage at one point, and then six months turned into a year and a year turned into two and so... you get the picture.

But yeah, I'd been having this little dull ache once in a while at the site of my (one) filling so I very apprehensively went in today to get a cleaning and have it checked out. I've been practicing excellent dental hygiene, or so I thought, and I hoped that my hard work would pay off. The hygienist took x-rays and said really things looked good - no pockets of dark spaces to indicate an abscess or root problem. She took a picture of the filling and low and behold there was a little crack in the filling and she said the dentist would look at it but she didn't think it would require anything more than replacing the filling... whew... when the dentist looked at it she said there might be another crack too but that she'd take the old out, have a look inside the tooth, make sure all was ok, and replace it with a nice, new, white filling. Ok, I think I can handle that... :-)

Oh, and the hygienist couldn't believe how great my teeth were and how very little plaque build up I had. She also said I got an A+ for flossing - that I was in the top 2% of all patients - and there was not one smear of blood on the bib! I can't tell you how relieved I am that nothing major was wrong. I go back the 16th of August to have the filling replaced. I've not had anything like this done since I was 11, can you believe that filling is 33 years old?!? I even made an appointment for the next six month check-up. I'm back on track! And so very thankful it turned out to be ok. One less thing to worry about!