Anti Dentite

Today was the big day: filling removal day. Having cleared the epxenditure with the insurance company, I was fully committed to the replacement of all of my amalgam fillings. I ate my "meal of the condemned": a ham and emmental sandwich with gusto. I climbed each route at our lunchtime climbing session like it was my last. I kissed chloe goodbye and took the tram back into town and picked up the film from my new camera. The images looked sharp and saturated, if generally poorly composed. Would they be my last images? Actually, I was busily scanning them in until the last possible moment and then ran to the dentists office. He drilled out all nine teeth efficiently and without causing any pain. After manging to spit on my pants and shirt because my bottom lip was so heavily novacained (I appreciated the discretion of the nurse to turn away as I grabbed at the long strands of mucous leading from my mouth to the spittoon), the dentist told me to come back in an hour while his CEREC machine printed out my new teeth. But perhaps I should explain how CEREC works. The doctor uses a technique originally conceived right here in Grenoble for making tooth inlays. The process is impressive: drill out the old filling, powder the tooth with infrared reflective powder, take a picture with an IR camera, make a 3D computer model of the hole, design an inlay to fit the hole exactly, "print" an inlay out of a ceramic like VITABLOC with a diamond milling machine, then glue it in. The machine takes around 15 minutes to make one inlay, and I had nine, so I went back to the apartment and scanned in more slides while I waited. It's a pretty bizarre experience to be able to feel the giant gaps left by the drill with your tongue. I began to get a little nervous about what would happen if I passed out or something; it can't be such a good thing to be waiting around for too long with your teeth like that! The four ampoules of novacaine were still in full effect and who knows what that can do to your brain. When I got back, the dentist glued in the inlays (3 on the upper left, 2 on the lower left, two each on the right: #s 17, 16, 25, 26, 27, 37, 36, 46 and 47), drilled off the burrs and little tooth dingleberries still remaining, and sent me on my way. Did I mention that I was also providing support for an ESRF beamline, which had broken twice during the day?