Floss – Day 961

Floss – The Offending Material – Photo: L. Weikel

Floss

Tonight’s post is about frustration. Frustration and irritation and the fact that I cannot think of anything beyond the annoying situation unfolding within my own mouth. Mundane, I know. But man, when stuff happens with your teeth or sinuses – virtually anything above the neck – it’s almost by definition ‘in your face,’ and thus nearly impossible to ignore. The unlikely culprit causing my supreme discomfort this evening? Floss.

You wouldn’t think floss would cause an issue, but it has. Actually, technically, floss hasn’t caused the issue – it is the issue.

This seems to be an issue that probably originated in January, when I clenched my teeth long and hard enough to break off a piece of one of my molars. I wrote a post about it back when it happened because, again, it was ‘in my face’ and I could think of nothing else to write about in the moment.

In doing a quick search for that post so I could provide a link to it, I had a slight ‘aha’ moment. I realized there’s a connection between when I broke my tooth back in January and what I’m experiencing now.

The Issue

Oddly enough, I broke a chunk off one of my molars in January a few days after the insurrection on January 6^th. As I mentioned above, it was caused by clenching my teeth. I was lucky enough to get an appointment with my dentist right away and she was able to fix it without the necessity of heroic efforts.

This actually led to a situation that I only just today (I swear) mentioned to Karl that I’m going to have to make another appointment with the dentist to address. Specifically, no matter what I put into my mouth to eat, ultimately a piece of it finds itself wedged between the tooth that was repaired and the one beside it. And sadly, it seems like the space between the two teeth is getting larger. (Why does it always feel like any gap or space in our mouth – no matter how small – feels like a veritable cavern when probed with our tongue?) A question for another time, I guess.

Until I make another appointment with the dentist, though, I deal with it by religiously ‘packing floss.’ Indeed, yet again tonight, I had to whip out the floss to remove the offending material. Of course, while I was at it, I decided to floss between the rest of the teeth in my head, since the more’s the merrier. Can’t be too fastidious.

Yeah. Right. Nope.

An Imbalance

I believe an imbalance has occurred in my mouth over the past six months since my broken molar (which actually was mostly a broken filling) was repaired. The gap on one side has grown larger while all the teeth on the other side of my mouth have squished together. The way I know this?

Floss.

Tonight, while flossing all of my pearly whites, the floss I was using got stuck between two molars. Indeed – the very same two molars where the annoying gap is located on the other side of my mouth. Now how weird is that (but not)? The two molars on the other side of my mouth are so tightly clenched together, so to speak, that the stupid floss broke off between them. Now, all I can feel is the pressure it’s causing as it sits there, wedged in where it doesn’t belong.

I’ve tried everything to remove it, from trying to coax it out with a thinner type of another floss to trying to use tweezers to pull out the offensive material. No deal. It’s in there for good.

So I guess I really do need to call the dentist tomorrow. How embarrassing and annoying. But at least maybe I’ll restore dental balance.

(T-150)