First trip to the dentist in 16 years…

…and it wasn’t good. 
 
Recently, I had been having a really sharp pain around my only tooth with a filling. It took me two weeks to get an appointment with a dentist a co-worker recommended. I could also wait because the pain went away on the day I scheduled the visit but I still stuffed myself with over-the-counter painkillers at various doses to keep it manageable. 
 
It turned out to be the tooth behind the one with the filling and it’s rotten, rotten, rotten. Actually, the decay is in such a horrible area, I decided (with the dentist’s blessing) to have the tooth extracted next week. I can sacrifice one in the back no one can really see. There’s one upside to it. My wife will know about it when the cops need a quick idea on my corpse! Now the dentist did give options other than extraction, namely oral surgery for what sounded like the mother of all root canals. If getting it out of mouth is faster and cheaper, then it will leave me more money to take care of the other cavities in need of easier solutions. 
 
Maybe I should try out for the NHL. Every rink has a dental chair so each team’s dentist can immediately start saving the players’ teeth. Look at Jeremy Roenick’s smile! Derian Hatcher must’ve knocked out at least seven of his original teeth with that dirty hit a few years ago.