Monday 16 February 2009

Pic of the day: Divine punishment? Or am I the one doing the punishing?

...God kills a tooth (part 3)

I went to the dentist today. I may have to amend my earlier observation that "every time you buy a new computer, God kills a tooth". Actually it only applies to laptops, but it does so with disturbing accuracy. Since I first noticed it, this is the third laptop I have ordered (it won't come until Friday) and the third tooth I need to replace. This time it broke off before I had actually ordered the computer, but I was already touring the shops looking for one. There are reasons for that, which I may write about later. If there are reasons for breaking two teeth and having another fall out, within a week of the purchase or ordering of the computer, I'd like to see them.

The tooth was old and consisted almost entirely of a dark metal, presumably the quicksilver-containing amalgamation that is about to be forbidden now. It is probably not harmful to most people, especially if you don't have other teeth with different metals in them. But it is anyway less effective in protecting the teeth than the new plastic-like synthetics, which also have the slight benefit of being similar to the natural color of teeth.

The dentist found no other problems than the broken tooth, which was a nice surprise after all the candied pineapple cubes I have eaten over the last few months. It is an incredibly yummy food and otherwise healthy if you don't mind the sugar. I don't, because as you know, I have a medical condition that severely restricts how much fat I can eat. So I get most of my calories from carbohydrates, and I eat a lot of those over the course of the day. After all, carbs are only half as dense in calories as fat, so I must eat almost twice as much. That means I eat fairly often (since my stomach hasn't grown all that much bigger) and that means my teeth are running in sugar much of the day. I guess natural selection has taken out most of the weaker ones during my younger years, when I did not see a dentist for a decade or more.

Next dentist appointment is the 25th. But much else happens before that.