At 50, I've lost my first permanent tooth. Molar 47. No one knows for sure, but it might have been cracked all along.
It started bothering me last December. I'd not seen a dentist in a while, so I dismissed it as 'probably a cavity' and kept putting off seeing a dentist. It was a mild bother when I bit and chewed hard stuff - nuts, maybe a steak. It got progressively worse, and one night after the last Iran War started, I ground my teeth so hard that I knew something was off when I woke up the next morning - that was when we were waking up in the middle of the night and running to the shelter downstairs with the children, terrified with the noise and terrified for the children.
That's when the toothache started in earnest. It'd come and go, so I thought I'd just wait until it resolved on its own. It wouldn't, so I finally saw the dentist. To no one's surprise, nothing was seen either clinically or in the x rays. I was offered a Botox shot, saying it was probably my cheek muscle rather than my tooth, and, needless to say, I didn't take it. Eventually, the dentist at the new clinic in Jaljuliya spotted the tooth infection, conferred with the powers that be, and low and behold, I was in for a root canal treatment, which I had in early April.
That seemed to do the job. The tooth continued bothering me every now and again when I bit and chewed a bit harder, but I dismissed it as the tooth healing, and finally in August I got another full-blown tooth infection in exactly the same spot - only I was abroad for another week. Saw an online doctor, who prescribed me a course of antibiotics, which, as it turns out, I could have got without the prescription - funny country we were in. Saw another dentist when we came back who diagnosed an overfill and decreed that the root canal treatment needed redoing. Saw the same specialist again, the one who'd done the first treatment, who dismissed the overfill was 'artefact', yet proceeded to redo the treatment - sort of. He told me to come back after two weeks to finish it, only to walk out on me right when I arrived for my appointment FOUR minutes late when the day finally came. We actually crossed paths in front of the clinic, only I didn't think it was him as he was supposed to see me just then, but it did strike me how much he looked like him.
Setting up a new appointment turned out to be a living nightmare, as internal bureaucracy dictated that I needed to finish the treatment where I'd started it - which I didn't want to because now I was upset with the sloppiness of said specialist - and, needless to say, that was only explained to me in English much, much later, by the seventh or eighth time I was trying to set up an appointment, after my local clinic - the same ones who failed to spot the infection in the first place all those months ago - turned me down TWICE even if my face was swollen and my gum was oozing pus from the infection for anyone to see. Eventually, I was able to secure an appointment in Netanya tomorrow after another dentist saw me, cleaned the wound in my gum, and prescribed me another round of antibiotics. Exasperated, I threw the towel and set up an appointment with a private specialist two days earlier - if anything, to get the proverbial second opinion. The diagnostic session was free and the specialist is Brazilian, so at least there wouldn't be the language barrier for a change.
So, I go there yesterday. We start chatting and it turns out we're neighbours in Kfar Saba as well as fellow countrypeople. It takes her seconds to manipulate the tooth and come up with a diagnostic: it was cracked beyond repair. Might have been the bruxism, might have been the other dentist's sloppiness. Teeth that undergo root canal treatment, she explains to me, are more fragile and prone to fracturing - especially molars, which take the brunt of biting, chewing, and griding. The x ray confirms the infection and bone loss around the tooth, while she actually shows me with a mirror where the crack is: smack in the middle of the tooth. Without the temporary filling, I can actually see half the tooth moving and the crack widening as she manipulates it.
She offers me to have it removed that very afternoon. I wonder out loud about my little daughter's birthday party, scheduled for that very afternoon. The owner of the clinic, who's also Brazilian, walks in and mentions that he happens to have an opening because two other patients have cancelled. I confirm the price of the extraction, and we decide to do it there and then. I call my wife to tell her the news, and she is not amused. Not so much about the price (it wasn't as expensive as we feared), but the fact that I'd be AWOL at my daughter's birthday party, and it'd be up to her to handle everything - bringing the food, watching the children, talking to the other mothers, etc. I argue that I need the remaining days off to recuperate before I go back to work and that untreated, the situation could worsen again very quickly - i.e. the infection could worsen, and it could become an emergency. So, we agree on the extraction there and then, and I start getting all the anaesthetics shots - I didn't count, but it could have easily been five or six. They didn't hurt, of course, but it was hard not to remember my extreme phobia of dentists and huge needles in my mouth as a child. Also, it turns out that the dentist knew of my wife from WhatsApp groups of Brazilians in Kfar Saba. Our children are roughly the same age, and truth be told there are so few Brazilians in Kfar Saba (not to mention in Israel in general) that over time it's impossible not to hear of or come across them, even if you don't particularly want to be in an exclusively Brazilian community. And to add insult to injury, many times we actually know these people - or know of them - from the Jewish community back in Brazil: someone who knows someone who's someone else's cousin or sibling. In my dentist's case, she knew of my wife's cousin because her husband went to school with him.
Eventually, I made it to my little daughter's birthday party. She had an absolute blast, and I was even able to help my wife some, although when the anaesthetics wore off, I was in for an afternoon of absolute discomfort - I'm better now. It's the next day.
So much for turning 50.
