Fangs

So.  Monday I went to the dentist to replace my missing werewolf fang.  A simple thing really.  At least that's what I was told after the tooth broke off awhile back during an earlier visit.  Unfortunately, my regular dentist has gone walkabout--never returning from his two week vacation.  No one in the office is quite sure what has happened to him, or what's going to happen to the practice.  As you can imagine, I am not feeling warm and fuzzy about this development, nor do I feel in any way confident of a positive outcome with my new tooth.

At the moment, they are rotating dentists from other towns while either headquarters is trying to hire someone new, or they are searching high and low for the missing one.  In any case, it's a revolving door of dental practitioners, delayed appointments, rescheduling nightmares, yada yada.  My fang was to be replaced last week, but was rescheduled.

Back to Monday.  I have a very harried fill-in dentist who has driven down from Portland--a three hour drive, one way, if you're very lucky.  It's 4:30pm, he wants to get home and makes quick work of shoving this bizarre apparatus into my mouth.  The fake fang is supposed to fit into the empty tooth socket, which is attached to a metal bar that curves behind my front teeth, then clips to the other (real) canine tooth.  It feels horrible, foreign and painful.  I tell him so.  He says to get used to it for a day or two, then if it's still uncomfortable, come back in.  I'm not a happy girl.  This bloody fang has cost me the equivalent of a nice trip to London and a stay at my favorite hotel.  You think I'm kidding.  I'm not.

I come home, try to eat dinner a bit later, but with this weird piece of steampunk mouth gear, I end up biting my tongue so hard it brought tears to my eyes and blood oozing.  Not a flavor I want with my meal, thank you very much.  I take out the mechanics and give up for the night.

The next day I muddle through, though actually bit my tongue twice more, making it so sore, I can hardly speak.  Which is probably okay since I neglected to mention that my tongue is struggling with the metal bar behind my front teeth, so now I lisp like Elmer Fudd.  Stop laughing.  It's so not funny.  I sound like an idiot every time I try to use an "s" or "th" combo.  Spit flies.

I call the dental office.  And yes, I am Very Cranky. Because of the revolving door of dentists, I can't get an appointment until Thursday.  So yesterday I go in...and sit for nearly an hour.  Good thing I never leave the house without a book, or my Kindle.  Eventually I get in, and thankfully have a really nice, efficient woman dentist who agrees that the fit is terrible, the whole works will have to be redone, but until then, she fiddles and twists, uses tools that look remarkably like something from the Inquisition, but finally manages to at least get the thing to fit a bit better for the interim.

Apparently I can't get the new fang done until either the old dentist comes back, or a new dentist gets hired.  I won't rant on about how that sits with me.  Besides, if I get all worked up, I'll just spit all over you.