Dental Hygiene, Part 2

I went to the dentist last week.

My gums bled an awful lot. I don’t mean my gums bled like that old “maybe it’s that sharp metal hook you’re poking me with” chestnut. I mean like crime-scene a lot. At first, I thought the hygienist was just being dramatic: Yeah, I get it! I need to floss more, by which I mean I need to floss. Christ! You act like this is your first day on the job!

That is, until she told me to rinse and spit. If I could have slow-moed things down a little, what came out of my mouth could have easily passed for something out of the climactic fight scene in a Rocky movie, and I mean one of the later ones when they had a budget and nothing but blood-spitting to cram in all of their special effects. You know the one I’m talking about. With the Russian?

Suffice it to say, I was shocked at the amount of blood coming out of my mouth. Sure, I hadn’t been to the dentist in over a year, but my visit a year earlier didn’t result in nearly as much gum-bleeding. And, that had been my first trip since the turn of the century.

I started making a list of possible reasons my gums bled so much:
1 – There was rampant microbial growth in my mouth due to lack of mouthwash use.
2 – I was taking aspirin or some sort of blood thinner.
3 – I drove about three-thousand miles in the preceding month, and, as is my wont on roadtrips, I spent most of my time in the car sucking on and eating roasted, salted sunflower seeds.
4 – Since I quit smoking six months ago, I haven’t been chewing nearly as much gum as I had been for the preceding fifteen years.

(Incidentally, the first two possibilities were offered by my dental hygienist. Well fed up with her by that point, I responded to her question about the blood thinners:
me: "Does medical science consider bourbon a blood thinner?"
her: "No."
me: "Then, no. Please clean the rest of my teeth in silence.")

My old dentist – by which I mean the one I went to before the turn of the century – would always tell me about how he never had a cavity until he was in his late 40s. Then, he started eating raisins because he needed more fiber in his diet. As you probably know, raisins get pretty sticky, especially once you chew them up. So, the old dentist tells me, a regimen of dental hygiene proven successful for nearly half a century suddenly fails because he started eating more stuff that sticks between teeth. That story was part of a longer lecture about why it is important to floss. The big finish to that lecture was always, “because hell, son, you can brush your teeth with your tongue. You need floss to get the parts that count.”

Needless to say, I largely ignored those warnings.

The secondary point of the story, however, was not lost on me: dental hygiene is not a static monolith. It is a single facet of your life, and, as with any other lifestyle choice, dental hygiene must evolve within the whole of your behavior. For the record, Little Janice Judging-You's conjectures notwithstanding, I believe the biggest contributing factor to my dentist-office bloodbath is #4, although I have no doubt the extended driver-seat barrage of sunflower seeds also irritated and enflamed my gums.

Causes aside, I’m trying to floss more faithfully these days. I have added dental floss to two important lists: The List of Things That Are ALWAYS In My Pockets and The List of Things About Which I Have Surprisingly Strong Opinions. Since I no longer have closet-smoker’s breath to cover, I have to make a conscious effort to chew more gum. (Just one of a surprisingly large number of tributary activities that not smoking has affected.) I also find myself in the market for one of those fancy electric toothbrushes so I can prevent any further damage to my gums at some reported problem sites.

Against my better judgment (and against my dental coverage maximums), I allowed myself to be scheduled for a follow-up cleaning in just three months, fully twice as soon as a traditional twice-a-year schedule. They permitted me a mere half-hour appointment this time, and I’m determined to show them they’re wrong about me, that I’m not just another yahoo who insists on coming in and bleeding all over everything. "You've got good teeth," my current dentist tells me, "you need to take care of your gums so there's something holding on to them."

Great. I liked it better when I was in my 20s and didn't have to worry about that sort of shit.