For the past few days, it had been a pain to have a glass of cold water or a cup of hot tea. Literally a pain… My right jaw and cheek was hurting after drinking almost anything. I thought one of my teeth is being sensitive, but I wasn’t sure which tooth was the culprit. So, I made an appointment to the dentist.
Originally, I thought I got a cavity on the lower back molar. But the X-Ray didn’t show any cavity. So, the dentist thought that the crown on one of my molars was thinning out, and causing the tooth to be sensitive to temperature changes.
You see, I’ve been wearing a temporary crown on this particular molar for a while . It’s a plastic crown that was designed to last for about 3 months, and to be replaced with the permanent crown later. But I didn’t replace it… and have been wearing the temporary crown for almost 3 years! (The dentist said that 3rd birthday of my temporary crown is on November 10… which is in 3 weeks).
Yikes, no wonder it’s thinning out.
laying the putty on the tooth
So, last Monday, I couldn’t take it anymore… the pain started to throb at night, and I couldn’t sleep. I gotta replace it with the permanent crown ASAP! The dentist took the plastic one out, and replaced it with another temporary one (while waiting for the permanent crown to be made… All permanent crowns are custom-made), this time was a silver-colored crown. The removal process was always uncomfortable. It always bled quite a lot and local anaesthetic injection always stung.
But the molding process was fun. I know some people don’t like it… Like my mom always threw up during this process. She said she hated the smell, and felt like being choked by the mold. As for me, I love seeing the impression of my teeth on the mold.
First the doctor took the mold of my upper jaw: the putty is pink and it set quite fast… So fast that they had to do it quickly. No talking while doing this one! It looked like our gum, no?
the upper mold… quicker and not as precised.
And then, they took the bottom jaw impression. This one took longer to do. She first put a grey-ish purple putty onto the press, covered it with a plastic and pressed it onto my lower jaw for a quick, rough impression. Then she took out the plastic, put a green putty onto the purple cavity impression of my jaw, and added more green putty directly on top of the tooth to be crowned. She then immediately plopped and pressed the purple impression (lined with that green putty) back on to my lower jaw. This one took forever to set… But once it set, it looked really cool… and much more detailed!
the lower jaw mold. much more precise and took longer to set
Then, all those molds were to be sent to the people who make the crown. And I would have to wait for a week or two for the permanent crown to arrive. Meanwhile, I’ll be sporting this new silver tooth 🙂
