My son just lost a front tooth, which is very cute. There was another tooth behind it, just waiting to take its place.
I mentioned in an earlier post that even though my father went through starvation conditions during the Korean War, he died without a single cavity. We kids were raised in a somewhat similar way, in that we didn’t get much in the way of sugar and soda, especially not in comparison with the typical American diet.
So I have perfect teeth, too. The kind that make dentists peer in my mouth and go, “Wow!” My dentist in New York City was so sad when I moved, he pretended he was going to cry. He didn’t even care that he never earned any money from me, he just liked to show off my x-rays, as if I were his favorite student or something.
But yesterday, I received some devastating news. Dentists have been warning me for quite some time that I have a bad habit of clenching my teeth (I am told this is also a very Korean trait, as almost every friends I’ve moaned about this to has told me about this product called a “Night guard” that my dentist recommended). My problem is that I’m not just grinding my teeth at night, I clench them while I’m writing, when I’m having trouble with our son, etc.
The news was that in the last year, I’ve clenched my pearlies to much that I’ve actually WORN THEM DOWN to the dentin, the soft part under the enamel. In fact, I have to have them filled, as if they were cavities, although technically I don’t have cavities. And, yet, I’m going to be shelling out a couple hundred for the night guard, but that will only take care of 50% of the problem, because I can’t see wearing them while I write.
It’s scary to compare my choppers to my dad’s, which lasted him his whole life. My dentist told me that a majority of my biting surfaces on almost all my teeth are gone, they’re flat, like horse’s teeth. And who had more stress, my father living through a war, or me? This is very sad commentary indeed at how chronic stress can indeed, literally wear you down.
I am off to see Dr. Jiao, my acupuncturist. Hopefully he won’t chide me for being too stressed…
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