Tins of teeth and home-grown dentistry
MY LITTLE girl lost a baby tooth over the weekend, a molar.
Why do we say ‘lost’ a tooth while we haven’t lost it, it’s just not in our mouth anymore.
She put the tiny little molar on top of a set of bedroom drawers beside a letter asking for the money to go into her eftpos card.
Times have changed; even tooth fairies are going digital.
With the tooth in hand I remembered how precious baby teeth were when my sons were her age.
Not because they were reminders of their babyhood, there were other reasons.
When I was 17, I had four front tooth crowns installed.
I had an overbite and it was wearing my teeth away.
My parents paid for it, it looked great and still did 13 years later when I skipped off to Australia.
I didn’t know it then, but crowns have a lifespan of around 15 years.
One night I was eating curry and I felt something hard in my mouth, it was a front tooth.
I was horrified.
I looked like a hillbilly mama.
The next day I phoned a university who had dental clinics to find out if they could put the crown back in.
They couldn’t, wouldn’t and didn’t.
I’m sitting there tooth in hand, feeling the breeze whistle through my mouth thinking this this is my new normal.
You could call me Lazza from the trailer park with this unattractive chessboard smile.
Then inspiration hit!
When my little sister was working at an English pub she cut her hand, it was deep and needed stitching.
She used superglue to seal the wound and it worked a treat.
Turns out superglue was invented by surgeons and is perfectly fine to use on a human.
It was invented in 1942 by Dr Harry Coover and first used to temporality patch internal organs of injured soldiers in the Vietnam War.
I put a dot of glue on top of my tooth and carefully pushed it back in.
Success!
Three weeks later the same tooth came out again and I discovered the lifetime of the glue’s bond.
Not a problem, I made sure to keep superglue on hand should I need it in an emergency.
Around a year later, I was going about the usual routine of scraping old glue off when the tooth broke.
The glue weakened its structure and a slither had broken off the side.
Then inspiration hit, again.
My son’s baby teeth were inside a keepsake box on the bookshelf.
I took one out and broke off a slither.
I compared it to the missing piece on the crown, filed it to fit then glued it to the broken crown to make it whole again.
I used this method of dentistry for around two years, each time the crown broke, I’d take a piece of a baby tooth and use that as parts.
When my parents migrated to the UK I went over for a visit.
Inside my hand luggage was a little tin with three baby teeth, a nailfile and bottle of superglue.
It was only afterwards I realised the explaining I’d need to do if security looked inside my ‘dentistry tin’.
While in the UK I visited a childhood friend whose husband is a dental technician.
I told her about the baby teeth and how I was using them.
The next day her husband made me new teeth and I arrived back in Australia no longer needing my little tin of teeth and superglue.
Early this morning I snuck into my daughter’s bedroom to take her letter to the tooth fairy and the tiny white molar.
It reminded me how I’d once used tiny teeth just like this one to fix one of my own.
I don’t need it, but maybe I should put it somewhere safe just in case.
Crowns only last around 15 years and I’m 17 years into my new ones.
