I always thought I had pretty good teeth. As a little kid, I never had cavities. I brushed, flossed, and didn’t eat sweets (I’m all about salt, not sugar). What a shock, then, when I went in one day as a 13 year old and was told I had eight cavities consuming my molars. My dentist, Dr. Otis Beck, Sr. was on his last legs, literally tottering into the room, filling what were probably the last fillings he ever filled with the leading technology of the time, the amalgam filling. I was bummed, but, I also thought it was sort of cool, a bunch of silver in my mouth (I actually thought they were real silver, and thus making my teeth, and me, more valuable), protosuburban gangsta style, and never really thought about them again. I never needed braces, and my wisdom teeth came in fine, so I missed out on those rites of passage with a mixture of pride and jealousy (if you didn’t have braces, they seemed a lot cooler than if you did have them). When I go to a new dentist, they always marvel at their form and my full complement of 32, an unusual sight in a world in which appendixes, adenoids, tonsils, and wisdom teeth are plucked from us at the first sign of trouble.
In my late twenties, I started having some troubling health issues. Specifically, I was twitching. You know the type of twitch you may get under your eye, or on your lip, just a bit of a pulsing sensation? Like that, only everywhere. It would hit random places on my body--behind my knee, on my shoulder, bicep, chin, anywhere. It traveled. And it was visible; I could say, hey, look at my quadricep, and the muscle would be contracting markedly. A nice party trick, but less cool if you can’t control it and don’t know why it’s happening. Eventually, I went to doctors of the Western variety. They poked and prodded, and even stuck me with amplified needles, searching for sounds, and further, for noise between the pulses, which could indicate something truly awful, like MS. After a few weeks of this, they came back with a diagnosis: “Benign Irregular Fasciculation.” Translated, that’s, Harmless Random Twitching. Seriously? I went through all that for them to tell me, in doctor jargon, the same thing I had told them? The salient distinction, of course, was that I didn’t think it was benign. You don’t twitch without a reason, but since it didn’t fit in any of their boxes of illness, it was benign, obviously.
I turned to the East. Dr. Fu Zhang stuck me some more, acupuncture of the large needle variety, with electric diodes attached, to further release my muscles. I can’t say it helped, but he at least offered an idea: my liver was fucked up. “But I’m not drinking,” I said. He nodded and said, basically, that the liver can be fucked up from plenty of things other than drinking. He blamed stress, and told me to think about changing jobs. At the time I was involved with a broker dealer affair, sort of my own boiler room, and it was easily the most stressful thing I’d ever dealt with. Curiously, when I was in Costa Rica, before I started my many projects there, I didn’t twitch. Or, I didn’t twitch as much. So stress seemed a reasonable diagnosis. He suggested I get some teas to help calm me down.
The greatest herb store in NYC was just around the corner from my apartment, Angelica’s Herbs on 9th and 1st Ave (sadly, now gone or relocated, I don’t know which). Angelica herself was this very serious, taciturn woman who doled out her herbs with a modicum of communication and patience for any questions. Just take the tea like I told you, and don’t call me in the morning. Fine. Please give me something to relax. She did, and warned that it might also make me depressed, so she gave me another tea to help with that. A few weeks of this and I was still twitching, although a bit less. I came back to Angelica and she offered to do a health consultation for $50. Now, since Angelica looked like 40 year old, but was actually 107 and wrinkle free, I figured she knew some secrets. Let’s do this.
She took me into the back room and stared into my eyes until I became uncomfortable. Then she looked inside my mouth. That was it. She delivered her diagnosis: “You are not like most of the people who come to see me. You are very strong, great vitality. The only problem is inside your mouth. You have to get the mercury out of your teeth.” Seriously? Mercury? What are you talking about? “Your fillings. They are filled with mercury.” I thanked her politely and left thinking she was a complete kook. Surely my teeth were fine and mercury free.
Luckily, the internet had been invented by then, so I did some searching. Lo and behold, type in “mercury amalgam filling” and everything that jumps up speaks of toxicity. I wasn’t necessarily sold on the conspiracy theories surrounding it, but I did take note of the fact that they’d been banned in Norway and other sensible societies. Maybe there was something to it. As I looked further I could feel my teeth sweating, these little fillings slowly leaching toxic Hg into my body, setting me up for horrible diseases which would make the twitching seem like tickling.
I had to get the bastards out of there.
The dentist she recommended was in some UWS apt that doubled as a medical facility. The first thing Dr. Daniel Sanders did after checking in my mouth and telling me that my fillings were well past their life span, was inform me that the only reason he was removing them was because of that fact, and not because of some alleged mercury concern. In fact, if we didn’t agree on that, he couldn’t do the work. Why? Well, because the ADA would disbar his ass if he went around promulgating such nonsense. I swear he winked when he explained this. Fine, I get it. The ADA doesn’t want actual dentists confirming the conspiracy theorist accusations for fear of massive lawsuits, which pretty much proves the conspiracy. I was pissed, but I agreed. Just get them out. He smiled, and got to work.
Removal is a chore. You have to vacuum up the mercury as you take it out, or else you’ll ingest it and then you’ve got an even bigger problem. This is uncomfortable, to say the least, choking on tubes while a guy takes a hammer and chisel to your mouth. Then, you have to see what’s actually going on under there. In my case, the fissures in the old fillings had allowed bacteria to do its thing, which meant more cavities. Decay all over the place. What I assumed would be a relatively simple affair turned into 3 months of twice weekly appointments, in which he cleaned out the decay, made impressions, and finally installed the new crowns. When he asked what material I wanted, I didn’t hesitate, I went for gold. Sure, porcelain looked more like teeth, but gold lasts damn near forever, 50 years or more. I was never going through this hell again.
Dr. Sanders did good work, or so I thought. He had great jewelers and they carved sweet crowns that almost justified the astronomical price for that summer of pain. I even read a few chapters of his self-published book, a mystery novel centered on the Torah. Let’s just say it wasn’t as good as Chaim Potok’s “The Chosen.” But whatever, I liked his style. He even relented when I went gold with one of my more forward facing molars, giving my smile considerably more of a gangsta lean. Fuck it, I had a hip hop label on the side, why not?
For a time, I enjoyed my fillings. My teeth didn’t hurt anymore (a low grade pain I had gotten used to, apparently), and my twitching was becoming less and less pronounced. Then one day, as I was flossing assiduously to protect my new grill, a filling popped out. Luckily, I didn’t swallow it, and spit it out into my hand. They’re a lot heavier than they look, gleaming on the top side and a dull grey on the bottom. And not much good in your hand.
I called Sanders but he had split town. Gone to Israel, presumably to write more mysteries. His replacement, Dr. Scholnick, was an affable guy, a wine lover and curious about finding some natural cleaning products in the jungles of Costa. He gave my teeth the once over and declared that Sanders had fucked up royally. “Yeah, these are great fillings, but the walls of your teeth are too thin to support them. The fillings don’t have enough purchase. He did inlays and he should have done onlays. This is going to keep happening.” Terrific. Scholnick had designs on doing new work then and there, but I opted for a wait and see approach. Just stick it back in. Oh, and please use some non toxic adhesive. Not that they make that, but, you know, try and find some. He did, and I returned to see him, as predicted, to get the fugitive fillings put back in. Finally, after about 10 visits at $300 a pop, he brought me into the adjacent room to show me his new toy. “This baby makes a crown on the spot. It’s all computers and lasers! It’s great!” He had this little box which could take a die sized piece of porcelain polymer and carve it into a computer matched fitting in about an hour. Price? $1500. Two visits later, I capitulated. Anything to stop this bullshit. Computers verified the topography of my tooth and sent the data to the machine, which churned out my new crown in the promised hour. He popped it in, sanded it to a satisfactory bite tolerance and sent me on my way. It sure seems solid, and you can’t even tell that it’s fake, since he matched the color to my other chompers. Score one for technology.
All well and good. Unfortunately, I’m not in NYC much these days, and I still floss. The other day, I popped out another one. Given that I wasn’t going to be around a US dentist for another few months, I had to go to town, to the one dentist there. Rolando. I know him from the surf, charging it on the bigger days with his tall frame and surprisingly smooth style. I also watched him invite a much bigger guy to the beach after a disagreement. The guy declined. Apparently Rolando is on some kung fu shit and can fuck you up quickly. My kind of dentist.
He did nice work, and by nice I mean he ground the hell out of my teeth and the filling for an hour, cleaning out more decay, before finally deciding the two could get back together again. He agreed the fillings were beautifully useless, but he didn’t have a laser box in the next room, his bed was there instead. He numbed me from my jaw to my chest and sealed me back up with a solid dose of cement. I didn’t bother asking for something non toxic. I’m far less healthy now, and frankly, I just want the shit to stay in. I don’t twitch much anymore. The yoga helps. When I do yoga. When I don’t, and the stress mounts as it always does, a little twitch resurfaces, under my eye or in my forearm. I breathe. I think happy thoughts. I think of the Man Upstairs, and that he’s tapping me lightly, telling me to ease up, calm down, and take a closer look at what I’m into that could be the root of this. I try not to ignore him.
I try to smile.
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