![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Teeth, jaws and the like
I had my first dental checkup in three years, and my teeth remain fine. Tech level has advanced again: I was given a small plastic-wrapped CCD imager to hold in my mouth for the X-rays, rather than a film holder, and my teeth were on a laptop screen within moments.
If I read the notes on the X-ray source correctly, it's 65keV; hc/E is then about 0.2 angstroms, which seems a surprisingly hard X-ray - I'm used to CuKa sources at 1.54A and synchrotrons that run at 1.00A. Does anyone have a reference for the X-ray absorption spectrum of air?
The toothache-like thing that has afflicted me for the last month is not tooth-related, but inflammation of the socket of the ball-and-socket joint at the right-hand side of my jaw; I'm told a major cause of this is grinding one's teeth together at night out of stress. I can take ibuprofen and hope it goes away, I can meditate constantly on the need to keep my teeth slightly apart when doing anything other than eating, or I can get the dentist to have made for me a small plastic cap to keep my teeth from grinding.
Generic ibuprofen costs 10p a tablet, and I should take three tablets a day. The custom-made small plastic cap costs three hundred pounds; it appears to be patented in such a way that it has to be manufactured by American dentists at USAnian-health-care costs.
If I read the notes on the X-ray source correctly, it's 65keV; hc/E is then about 0.2 angstroms, which seems a surprisingly hard X-ray - I'm used to CuKa sources at 1.54A and synchrotrons that run at 1.00A. Does anyone have a reference for the X-ray absorption spectrum of air?
The toothache-like thing that has afflicted me for the last month is not tooth-related, but inflammation of the socket of the ball-and-socket joint at the right-hand side of my jaw; I'm told a major cause of this is grinding one's teeth together at night out of stress. I can take ibuprofen and hope it goes away, I can meditate constantly on the need to keep my teeth slightly apart when doing anything other than eating, or I can get the dentist to have made for me a small plastic cap to keep my teeth from grinding.
Generic ibuprofen costs 10p a tablet, and I should take three tablets a day. The custom-made small plastic cap costs three hundred pounds; it appears to be patented in such a way that it has to be manufactured by American dentists at USAnian-health-care costs.
no subject
no subject
I will ask whether the cost includes fees for having the device adjusted; what concerned me slightly was that the manufacturing process involved sending moulds off to America which would take a month to return as a working inhibitor, and if I've only had the dull ache for a month it would be deeply vexing were it to disappear on its own while the inhibitor was being fabricated.
no subject
If the cost does not include adjustments, or if your dentist cannot adjust the device without sending it back to the US, those would be reasons to look for another dentist if you turn out to need this kind of help. (I used to see one dentist, in walking distance, to have my teeth cleaned and cavities filled and that sort of thing, and I'd take the MBTA to Brookline to see a different dentist who understood how to deal with the NTI.)
I don't see the month's delay caused by sending the molds to America as a reason not to do it. Sure, if you can stop clenching your teeth with yoga and hot showers, you might not need to spend 300 pounds or bother with going to the dentist...but that would be just as true if your dentist were making the device in his or her back room. Mine made the impressions and told me to come back in 2 weeks to get the device and have it adjusted, only it was nearly a month by the time I could actually get an appointment.