My Dental Journey

My Grandma would be proud of me that I'm finally taking care of my teeth because she used to nag me about dental care.

Nag- that's horseshit! She tried to parent me! Which was her job! Nana knew I wasn't taking care of my teeth and she had false teeth from growing up poor at the turn of the 20th century in rural Tennessee.

I've been racking my brain trying to figure out when I can blog.

I have been racking my brain trying to figure out what to blog about.

I am too busy to write in the evening and my creative energy comes in the morning like it does for a lot of people. Then this morning I sent an e-mail to enter a comedy contest. I woke up earlier than normal to get a clip of my comedy on You Tube. It took all night to download from my older computer.

It hit me. Write in the morning instead of scouring other people's work on cable television.

It hit me. Write about my teeth.

Why my teeth? Well, millions of other people watched and will be writing about President Obama's State of the Nation talk last night. But only two people talked about the state of my teeth last night and only one person will be writing about them.

As my dentist, Dr. Sam Tahbaz says, my mouth has been stabilized. I didn't see a dentist for years. A year or two after I got sober, I went to a dental clinic for 4 simultaneous root canals. Typical alcoholic feast-or-famine behaviour. Up to that point I hadn't been to a dentist since my teens and my mom made me go.

I've held a non-for-profit corporate day job for over 2 years now. I get paid vacation and insurance. After a year on this job I started getting a tooth ache that kept getting worse until I had to see a few emergency dentists to extract a tooth and do another root canal. After that I found a great dentist, Dr. Tahbaz, right up the street from me.

I have been going to him, getting fillings replaced, cleanings and scaling. As he reminded me, my fillings were from the Carter Administration.  Ha! And now, my mouth is stabilized!

I still have some work to do but if I got stuck on a desert island today my gums would hold up for a while.

My friend Julie shared with me yesterday that she hadn't been to a dentist in 5 years and finally went. I got to share my "Dental Journey" with her to show my support.

Of course, I only went back to the dentist because I am going to live, probably, till I'm old. I didn't know this but I have come to accept and embrace this. So I don't want to go forth with a mouth full of "scusm gnashers" as my friend Johnny calls them.

And I have insurnace I should use. But it took me a year and a horrible toothache and a few hundred dollars to get me to use it.

That relates to President Obama's talk in a way.

We should give people medical and dental care but we can't make them use it. That hope comes from a desire to live and be happy. I wish I could give that to people. Maybe my "Dental Journey" will help.