The Grind...

Nothing to do with coffee or putting in time at a job.

I broke a tooth on the way to Arizona.  Not a crack, a big chuck of it busted apart.  Perhaps the dangers of eating one of those hard-on-the-teeth ham and cheese omelets?

Fortunately, Stephanie's dentist was able to get me in right away.  He and his staff were very caring.  After seeing me, they set me up with an appointment for today.  I knew I was going to need a root canal and a crown.  The plus side: they have the equipment for making the crown, so I could get it all done in one visit.  They estimated 2 1/2 to 3 hours total.

Turns out, it took longer.  A lot longer.

In spite of his best efforts to numb me, the root nerves had other ideas.  He felt bad for what I was going through... I didn't feel so great about it, either. ;-)  A little over 3 hours into it, he suggested that I might want to stop for the day and come back another time.  I said, "Let's get this done today.  You do what you need to do, I'll pay for new arm-rests on this dental chair if I break these from squeezing so hard."

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely sure."

Another half hour later, he was through with the root drilling part.  I generally don't have an issue with getting numb for dental visits.  This was quite an ordeal.

The technical stuff was interesting: his assistant used a special camera in my mouth to reconstruct the tooth, with the aid of a CAD-CAM program, then another machine went to work carving the crown.  Fitting it was the shortest part of the procedure.

Five hours.

I'll probably lay off popcorn and taffy for a day or two.  ;-)

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On edit:

There was a thread about the bra that unhooks itself "when you're in love" on the trailer sailor forum... I know, you're thinking, "What does that have to do with sailing??"  Nothing.  We talk about everything on the trailersailor.  I started to respond to that thread by telling how "back in the day, I could unhook one of those with barely a wave of the hand... but these days, it takes two hands and a bunch of tugging..."

And then realized that perhaps the pain pills the dentist prescribed have loosened my usual less-than-great "filter" and decided to not go into any more detail.  ;-)

Yeah, my mouth still hurts, but I kinda don't care as much.  Kinda.