The Dentist: Learning 7

Today I went back to my dentist for the third time in the last 5 months to have the same filling put back in my tooth. Now, this makes it seem like I have a lazy dentist, so let me back up and say I LOVE my dentist office. I've never been super afraid of dentist offices, and having 4 years of braces in high school/college has left me resigned to letting dentists and orthodontists do whatever they want to my teeth, but I am always rather tense, especially when they bring out the little drill. Everyone at my dentist office (Southern Indiana Smiles, if you're wondering) is always so friendly, they learned my name right away, and do everything they can to make me feel comfortable. And both times I've had to go back to replace the filling after it's fallen out they've done it free of charge and gotten me in for the appointment super quick.

So today I learned a couple new things about what can make a filling come out of your mouth. I always thought it was just eating too much sticky stuff. Now that didn't make sense with this filling for a couple of reasons. Number one, I haven't eaten very much sticky stuff and don't even chew gum. Number two, the filling is on the outside of my tooth on the gumline, not on top where I chew. The dentist wasn't positive what makes this specific filling so tricky (I got 3 other fillings at the same time which have all stayed in just fine). Her hypothesis was that something about my saliva was reacting with the bonding material in a bad way, so they took extra steps to keep my saliva away from the filling this time. I had no idea saliva was that powerful! I knew it was the first step in your digestive process, so obviously it has some dissolving properties, and I knew it was bad for chapped lips, because if you lick your lips when they're chapped they get worse, but I didn't know it could make my filling come loose. Hopefully it's nice and dry this time. The other possibility was that I might grind my teeth without realizing it, because apparently teeth grinding also weakens the gumline, which is where this tricky filling is located. My mom is a teeth grinder, but I have never noticed it myself, and they took a little impression and said it wasn't likely I grind my teeth from what they saw.

So that is what I learned at the dentist office today. Hopefully I will not need to go back until my semi-annual cleaning next month!