A tooth grinding

This morning I had a dental appointment. The first of two to get a crown fitted to a molar with some issues. My dentist noted this at my last regular cleaning a few weeks ago, and recommended I get the crown fitted soon to avoid more major work on the tooth in the future.

After injecting some anaesthetic, the dentist took a cool 3D scan of my teeth with a new gadget that I haven’t seen before. Being an imaging professional, with experience in 3D reconstruction, this was actually fascinating. The scanner had a probe head that the dentist moved around the teeth from all angles, and I could see it building up the 3D model in real time on the display screen. It also had colour capture, so the model was realistically coloured, with my gums and teeth showing very realistically.

Then once my mouth was numb, he started grinding down the molar, shaping to fit into the concavity in the bottom of the new crown. Then he did another scan, to get the shape of the tooth stump for moulding the inside of the crown. Then he fitted a temporary plastic cap to protect the stump for the next two weeks, until my next appointment, when the newly produced custom crown will be fitted. The whole process took a bit under an hour.

I went to pick up Scully from my wife’s work, and we walked home. I wanted to wait until the anaesthetic wore off before I ate lunch, to avoid accidentally biting the inside of my cheek while chewing. But it was still keeping my mouth numb by 1pm!

Eventually I walked with Scully up to the fish & chip shop. I ordered a chicken burger. Usually I’d get chips, but today I felt like potato scallops, so I got some of those instead.

As the anaesthetic wore off, my tooth started to ache a bit. Not too bad, but definitely noticeable. Hopefully that will wear off over the next day or so.

This afternoon I worked on a science class on basic astronomy, for my online science student’s next class tomorrow. It’s all about the solar system, Earth’s orbit, the moon, seasons, that sort of thing.