I told this to some people in chat, but feel the need to share it here on the forum, too. I don't know why, though. Maybe it's to get sympathy, or just to freak out people with dentophobia, just so I'm not the only one to suffer. :evil grin:

Anyway, for a long time, the rear molar on the right side of my upper jaw has been giving me shocks of pain whenever I've chewed a grain or something else tiny and hard with it. My dentist guessed that it probably had what she called "micro cracks" in it, and that it could *probably* be fixed with a crown on it to hold it together. She couldn't guarantee that it would work, but the sonner I did it, the better the chances would be. Since a crown would cost about $350, I decided that the I'd wait until it was absolutely necessary. This was, all things considered, a pretty stupid thing to do, since the odds that it would work would be smaller the longer I waited.

Lately, the pain had gotten worse, though. And it had started icing (correct word for it?) whenever I got sugar or chocolate on it. Besides, I could feel with my tongue something resembling a crack going up along the side of the tooth. But I decided to wait until after Easter to do anything about it, since my dentist probably were on holiday anyway.

But yesterday night, while brushing my teeth, a large chunk of the tooth actually broke right off! There's something extremely... icky or scary or sending-chills-down-your-spine-y with suddenly having big pieces of your teeth in your mouth and/or your hand... After (overly) carefully brushing and flossing the rest of my teeth, I found myself sitting, studying the piece of tooth. "Heh. Imagine, this thing was, until a few minutes ago, a part of my body!"

Well, the next thing I did, was to grab the phone to call my dentist's cell phone. But she's probably on holiday, at least she hasn't answered my messages I left for her. Fortunately, the tooth didn't hurt (I could even rinse in luke warm water and not feel anything), so I went to bed. This morning, I tried searching the yellow pages for a dentist who could do emergency dental aid. I found one at last, and spent about $65 on a temporary filling which is going out in a week or two to be replaced by a gold one, costing almost $400, I guess.

Trav"Now even poorer!"holt