JIM “PAPPY” MOORE: Where’s My Tooth Fairy?

It’s been the mid-1950s since I lost a tooth. About first grade or so you’re old enough to learn your baby teeth will be forced out as your new teeth come in. The process is aided and abetted by The Tooth Fairy. To help urge you through the process, you are told that when you get a tooth pulled or it falls out, you put it under your pillow at bedtime. During the night the Tooth Fairy comes and leaves a coin under your pillow.

It was exciting to find that coin the next morning. You woke up thinking about it! When you found it, you ran into the living room and announced to all that the Tooth Fairy had arrived. Then you showed off your nickel or dime or maybe even a quarter to all who would play along in the family. Eventually someone – an older sibling, a friend, a mean older kid at school – would tell you the truth: The Tooth Fairy was your mom and dad.

Nothing remarkable would happen with my teeth again until the spring of my Senior year in high school. Bob Hughey’s dad – Dr. Hughey the Dentist – would examine my teeth for the first time they had been looked at by others. My teeth were pretty good. I had been a kid drinking West Texas water my pre-school years and something about that water made for hard teeth. My hard teeth had done pretty well for those school years.

Dr. Hughey found and filled several cavities. Those cavities and their fillings would remain untouched until well into the 21st century. I would suggest that Dr. Hughey must have done an excellent job on my fillings.

In my last year in the Air Force, I had to do something about my impacted Wisdom teeth. They were giving me a bad time, getting swollen, hurting, generally making life miserable. The Air Force dentist was a young officer a few years older than my then 22 years. He said “we’ve got to get those impacted Wisdom teeth out.” At the time I didn’t give it much thought. Then during the procedure he had to get those suckers out and they didn’t want to come out. It was very painful, which I survived only because he had shot me full of something to deaden the pain. Still, the actions in my mouth made it sore, and made eating for a while unbearable.

I survived the removal by hook or crook of those impacted Wisdom teeth. No Tooth Fairy. I didn’t want to have to do that again.

Over the years from my late twenties until my sixties I would see a dentist for this or that. My teeth held up well, and Dr. Hughey’s filling held up remarkably. Finally, though, in my sixties those fillings had to be replaced. Some crowns had to be put in. A fine dentist (also a veteran) took care of that and I was good to go for years.

Things took a wrong turn the past year or so. I had to have some work done. Recently my new dentist informed me that I had a bad cavity which needed filling and that would mean removal of an old filling, and a root canal, and then fillings and a new crown. As I am wont do to, I said “let me cogitate over that and I’ll get back to you.” I like to cogitate almost as much as I like saying the word when it applies.

For me cogitating means looking up and reading materials about such things as root canals. I learned that for older people such as myself, there can be hidden dangers. Mostly, it is the continuing opportunity to have infection, which infection can have deleterious effects on one’s general health. Specifically, it can impact heart function negatively. Many commentators suggested simply pulling the bad tooth and being done with it, or replacing it with a bridge or such.

Having studied the issue, I decided to just get the tooth pulled and see how things go. If I like that, fine. If I don’t then Plan B goes into effect and I study the forms of replacing it. Right now I’m ready to see it gone. The filling has lost small pieces the past two months and I am done with that. It has to come out, and in a few hours the tooth and its remaining filling will be pulled. With any luck at all, getting it pulled will take less time than filling out the 14 page questionnaire that every doctor and dentist insists on having you fill out every time you see them. (What are they doing with the last one I spent half an hour filling out?)

My Medicare Advantage plan will pay some of this cost, and I will pay some of this cost, but they can never tell you how much it’s going to be ahead of time because that would be too easy. They want to explain it to you when you are still full of pain killer and can’t talk well.

I sure miss Dr. Hughey.