Indenture

            On Friday Nick Cushing was going to come in from Hamilton in the early afternoon to have me read some lines for his animation project. I realized that morning though that I’d forgotten to pay for my March phone service and so he wouldn’t be able to call me unless I got that done, so at around 10:00 I walked over to Freedom Mobile. On the way back I stopped at Lucky Supermarket where I bought a bunch of grapes and three apples. When I got home I decided to check to see if my dentist’s office had called and found out that they had, back in the last week of February. I phoned them right away and found to my surprise that my denture was ready. It only took three weeks even though Dr. He had assured me that I would have a two-month wait. They offered me an appointment for 13:30 so I took it and sent a message to Nick letting him know that we’d have to meet later.

            It was colder than I’d expected riding up to Bloor and Dundas and so I regretted having dressed for the way it had been for the last few days. Trusting the weather is like lending money to a crack addict. You can never depend on it.

            When I arrived at Smile City and walked up to the glass window of the front desk, the receptionist passed me a paper to sign and said it was for the “delivery” of my denture. I suddenly wondered if I’d come all the way up there just to arrange for a courier to bring the prosthetic tooth to my home. I repeated, “Delivery?” She said,  “That means so they can give you your denture. She told me to sit down, but almost immediately Dr. He’s assistant came and said “Hi”. She right away remembered that I refuse to be treated in the exam room that doubles as a thoroughfare for staff members who walk through it on their way to the lunch room. It took her less than a minute to find another office that was free. She told me that Dr. He was downstairs and would be there soon. I waited in the chair for about ten minutes and was starting to feel like succumbing to a nap when the dentist finally arrived.

            The denture looked like the foetus of a pink, white-headed pterodactyl that was missing its legs. When he shoved it into the gap to the right of my top front teeth it felt like he was ramming it in with a truck. Right away the bite felt wrong, so he made some adjustments behind my back with an electric grinding tool. This time it felt like my bite was slightly sliding down a little hill to the left. After more high pitched whirring followed by a rough re-entry in my oral region my bite felt like it was crunching something. Dr. He told his assistant, “This is why I hate dentures!” He used his little mirror tool and got me to bite an impression sheet, then made a final adjustment. After that the bite was fine but it was just plain awkward to feel that little piece of plastic like a wad of hard, flattened gum against the roof of my mouth. I was told that I would get used to it.

            I asked him to show me how to take it out and put it in. Learning to remove it took a second. I just had to find the upper edge of the front of the plate and pull down, but installing the thing was another story. At first I almost put it in backwards, then I fumbled it several times and had to recover it from my lap, then I even cut my gum a bit when trying to fit the blunted fang in from the wrong angle. When I finally succeeded, sensing my frustration and looking somewhat sympathetic the doctor sat down and asked me if I wanted to get an implant. For a second I thought he was going to offer to actually give me one despite my circumstances. I answered that I would like to but I couldn’t afford it and it’s not covered by either Ontario Works or Green Shield. He didn’t say anything more on the subject.

            He instructed me to always remove the denture before sleeping and to always put it in water when it’s not in my mouth because it will shrink if it gets dry. I asked whether I could brush it while it was in my mouth. He just told me I could try it. I wondered about my Waterpik. At first he didn’t know what I was talking about but when he understood that it was a water flosser he told me that I should stop using it. He thinks that it’s what caused the periodontal pocket that I’d had before surgery last year to get deeper. He added that it’s very controversial because it’s new and there’s no research. I argued that it’s not new and that I was pretty sure it’s been around for decades. He assured me that he advises all of his patients not to use them. Later I looked it up, no matter how I worded the search I couldn’t find a single dentist or anybody else that had anything bad to say about the Waterpik. I was not surprised to find that the oral irrigator was invented in 1962 and led directly to the Waterpik brand fifty years ago. Addressing his claim that there has been no research, I found that there have actually been over fifty studies, with all of them concluding that such a device is beneficial for oral care.

            I stopped at No Frills on the way home, where I bought several items to fit me annual temporary vegetarian diet which began on Wednesday.

            When I got home there was a Facebook message from Nick Cushing, saying he was in the neighbourhood, so I called him and he came over. I showed him my new tooth and he said he was disappointed that it looked normal. He took my picture but it didn’t feel natural to give a toothy smile on demand, so I didn’t.

            He recorded me reading the parts of two different characters from the same story. One was Todd Lehr, an undercover agent infiltrating a bumbling crime family and the other was radioactively modified humanoid rat that is also an informer. For the rat I tried to imitate Dustin Hoffman’s character from The Midnight Cowboy.