Of cavities and super glue pt1

Entry for July 08, 2008

Confession time.

I haven’t been to the dentist for 25 years, I haven’t had to.

I brush morning and night and any other time I think I should.

Funny enough I was only recently bragging about the virtues of my invulnerable pearly whites and lo several weeks later whilst picking my teeth with a small thumbtack - I discovered a cavity!

JESUS WEPT!

Now that shit hurts.

Having only had three cavities in my life and all but one of them at primary school, I can’t remember what tooth pain feels like. The way it wraps itself around the top of your head and makes one eye water. The way you lose any sense of which tooth hurts because it feels like your whole jaw has just been smashed by a hammer. Special.

Anyway, after the initial discovery I tried my best to put it out of mind. And basically for about 6 months my cavity and I shared a reasonably peaceful co-existence.

That time is now over.

The pain sort of comes and goes. But the other day, the pain stayed.

I called a dentist I was recommended and asked if he would pull that big ole bad boy out. He advised me to visit the hygienist for a couple of appointments and then he would have a look at what could be done with the tooth. Frightening how short tempered you become with a tooth ache.

An idea had been brewing in the back of my mind ever since I first discovered this cavity. I probably shouldn’t even be talking about this but… I wondered what would happen if I bunged up the hole with super glue. It seemed to me that the problem was that the tender little nervy bits inside the tooth were a little exposed now that the tooth around them had gone. Soooo if instead of tooth there was a thick layer of acrylic stopping the tender bits from feeling cold wind or fluid a great deal of pain might be avoided.

I’ve been using the stuff for years on the kids and my own wounds and it seemed to be quite safe and a whole heap more efficient than sticky plasters.

I got to work yesterday and after my morning cup of tea collapsed into a state of shock as the sugar smote me directly in the cavity. My god that is outstanding!

So with one hand clapped across my head and the other held out in front of me so as to avoid stumbling into anything while I floundered blindly across the workshop I struggled my way to the nearest desk I knew had a bottle of Loctite 406.

Now despite the blinding pain and the deafening crashing in my ears the voice of reason did manage to make itself heard and I admit for an instant I felt some degree of trepidation. The damn stuff is so viscous and so quickly heated by body temp that it’s virtually impossible to tell that you’ve got it on your skin – what if I fill my whole mouth with the sticky shit and glue my whole mouth shut.

Several more lightening flashes of bright light and the striking of a very large and ancient gong that seems to want to split my head from ear to ear and I’ve got the tip of the bottle jammed into the cursed cavity. I tilted my head to one side and gave a gentle squeeze.

There was no taste, no smell, no feeling whatsoever, until suddenly the back of my throat set. Gawd! Then my cheek stuck to my teeth and my tongue set to the bottom of my mouth faaaaarrrrkkkkk. I tried desperately not to panic and interestingly the lightening and the gong had vanished from existence in that single moment.

As it turns out (I did quite a bit of research – later) cyanoacrylate sets instantly on contact with water and although I had quite a bit of it stuck to my cheeks and tongue because they were wet when I applied the stuff it didn’t really bond. So effectively I ended up with a mouthful of harmless thin plastic and after a couple of minutes my cheeks and tongue came undone.

Yeah, yeah it wasn’t all that great an experience and it took another five minutes or so to get rid of most of the excess but...

The glue flowed nicely into the cavity on both sides and the bottom and went off like cement. The relief was almost instantaneous I would have to say from a pain level of 8 out of 10 to a barely noticeable 2 out of 10. Twenty minutes later I would say 0 out of 10 and apart from the rough edges here and there and the odd bit of plastic stuck under my tongue I could drink chilled water and breath air over the tooth again. Magic!

As I mentioned earlier I have done a lot of research into this field since and although nobody recommends this practice as opposed to proper dental treatment it is common practice in many emergency wards and has been used as a temporary fix by many expedition medics involved in climbing, trekking and hunting safaris. It is very low in toxicity and although originally designed for use in making rifle sights it didn’t really become a hit until the early 70’s when it was first used by surgeons to stitch together a human liver.

So if you ever wake up in the early hours of the morning with you ears ringing and the feeling of a very large vice being slowly tightened around your jaw remember, if your very careful not to get the shit in your eyes or better still you have a partner who is as adventurous as you are incapacitated bust out the super glue and fill that sucker with acrylic.