SST: Tooth Play

SESAME STREET TUESDAY

I have spent the last six years or so living with a gigantic cavity in the very back of my mouth. Initially it was pretty painful and sensitive, but I had been living with it for so long that I just got used to it. Last month I went to the dentist for the first time in years and had a full set of x-rays and a really deep cleaning, but I didn't get the cavity filled because my insurance wouldn't pay for any of it. But Jody, my dental student friend, tipped me off about a free clinic where I could get my cavities (I also had a second, smaller one) filled for free. So my super-generous roommate Micah, who is in his last semester of dental school, agreed to work on me for free at the clinic. Although I had warned him that the cavity was pretty massive, I don't think he realized quite what he was getting himself into when he volunteered to work on me. All in all it took about three hours to get the job done, and I felt bad for taking up so much of his free time on a Saturday morning. Thanks, Micah!

If only I paid more attention to the instructional melodramas of Prairie Dawn on Sesame Street, the cavity might never have developed in the first place:



I won't have Micah around to fix my teeth for much longer, so I'll just have to use the thought of Herry Monster terrorizing my teeth to scare me into having better oral hygiene.