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Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Dentemp - Cavity Filling Stuff

Last week, the day before going up on stage before 400 people, one of my fillings came out. There I was, with big hole in my tooth, and it was Sunday. My tongue would not stay out of it, and was being cut by the tooths exposed sharp edges.

I called the dentist office, and was offered the opportunity to call my dentist at home and ask her for a referral. I thought about it, then asked myself, "Well, what would I do if we were out on the boat?" Hmmm .... another normal life happening that could happen while we are out on the boat. My immediate answer was, "I'd put gum in the hole until we got to shore." Then Val remembered some stuff called Dentemp, it is a temporary filling substance that you can buy from a pharmacy. Once put in, it will hold for 3 or 4 days. Perfect! So, we went out and bought some Denttemp. It even has a pain reliever in the material.

It took me 3 different tries to get it put in right. The directions said to leave a bit of moisture in my mouth before putting the stuff in. Alas, each time I did that, the damn temporary filling fell out within a few hours. When I totally dried out my mouth and put it in, the stuff stayed. In fact, when I did go see the dentist 2 days later, she commented on how good of a job I did putting it in!

The nice commentary from my dentist was offset by the end result, I need a root canal. The filling fell out because there was a cavity underneath it, and the cavity was eating away at the tooth. The cavity ate right to the top of my tooth's nerve (hence the pain). This will be my 3rd root canal.

Dentemp is now another part of our boat medical kit.

Don't sail away without Dentemp!

2 comments:

  1. Great idea! I actually just linked to this post on a new sailing/liveaboard message board we created at www.thekeel.com.

    We have a thread there on Medical Issues you might not anticipate but really wish you did while sailing. Great product review!
    http://thekeel.com/showthread.php?t=2322

    Feel free to join us. Would love to have you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think when something like this happens, a person should be able to go back to the original dentist and they repair it for free. You wouldn't have had this problem if they had done the job right the first time around.

    ReplyDelete

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