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Dueling banjos -- 01/08/10 |
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Cue the dueling banjos... (click here) Well, I had my big periodontal appointment Wednesday to start the process of getting a titanium screw put in for another implant. This is for the tooth that has been causing problems for months. It is a front tooth -- upper right lateral incisor -- and it had had root canal work done many years ago and had a crown. Several months ago the crown broke off. A temporary crown was put in place while a new permanent crown could be made. The temporary crown broke. Got a replacement. Finally, the new pemanent crown arrived and was installed. This fall it came off. My dentist reinstalled it but also consulted with my periodontist. They determined that the problem was that there was not enough of a base left to securely hold a crown in place. The solution would be to replace it with an implant. This wasn't an emergency situation, so I put off the process until after the holiday period. Then, just before Thanksgiving, the crown began to feel loose. I could push it with my tongue. Quick visit to my dentist. He cemented it into place again. It began to loosen up again around Christmas, but somehow it stayed in place. My periodontist had hoped to be able to put the titanium screw in on Wednesday, but when he got in there he found that I had an infection and also had had some bone loss -- thus, instead of the titanium screw, I had a bone graft and the screw won't go in until summer (or perhaps not until autumn). So now I have an empty spot right up front... I've now just come from my dentist's office where he has just given me a temporary replacement tooth (a sturdier one will take a couple of weeks to be available). Hence, my joking about duelling banjos. With my missing tooth I look like a backwoods hillbilly. (No, I am not going to take a photograph and post it!) For any readers too young to have seen the move Deliverance, that was the theme song from that film about some city-dwellers on a river-rafting trip through the back woods who run into some dangerous hillbillies. (Movie trivia -- noted poet and novelist James Dickey -- who wrote the screenplay based on his hit novel -- also played the role of the southern sheriff in the movie.) And speaking of things hillybilly from the south... today is Elvis Presley's 75th birthday. Can you picture a 75 year old Elvis? I once heard a disk jockey playing what he claimed was an outtake from a Presley recording session. The song was "Are You Lonesome Tonight" and there was some clowning around going on and Elvis was apparently attempting to make some of the musicians crack up so he changed the lyrics from "Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there?" to "Do you gaze at your forehead and wish you had hair?" I wonder how much forehead he would have at 75? Hmmm, and he did sing "My hands are shaky and my knees are weak I can't seem to stand on my own two feet." If he were still around at 75 he might be singing that with a different meaning.
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