The horrible thing you see here is [the front and back view of] a tooth which until recently was attached to my mandible.

It was one of two molars I had filled when I was 12 years old, and for the following 17 years I thought no more about it.

Then in 2001 a small piece of it broke off. At the time I thought, “uh oh… I should get that looked at”, then somehow I never got around to it. A few months later another [larger] piece broke off, and I thought “this time I’ll really get it looked at” …

This kept on happening; every few months another bit would break off and I would neglect to do anything about it, until eventually a shard broke off underneath– where it couldn’t come away but instead just wiggled around in my gum causing random zings of pain. Harder to ignore, that. So finally, almost three years after the first chip fell off, and 20 years since my last visit, I went to see the goddamned dentist…

Who took all of about five minutes to yank out the remaining half of my disgusting, infected, badly decayed tooth.

It didn’t really hurt much, it didn’t bleed too much, and suddenly I was free of something that had been worrying me for three years.

I’m sure there’s a valuable lesson in this– if only I could learn it.

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This post inspired by Michael’s tooth story, which is much worse than what I experienced– I was very lucky really. My tooth was extracted about six months ago, and I had never intended to post about it but changed my mind when I realized that I quite like reading about other peoples personal experiences. The pictures are a bit gross I know, but hopefully will serve as stern warning to those who think they can let dental hygiene slide…