periodontitis. They showed me a different way to brush my teeth – angling the toothbrush so that the bristles would go under the gumline – and told me to come back in three months. When three months was up, I didn’t even get a chance to call and make an appointment, because they called me first. I had that appointment last week, and the hygienist poked around in my mouth for a few minutes before declaring that the periodontitis hadn’t gotten any better. “It’s not real bad,” she told me. “We caught it early!” And then she went on to suggest that I have something called Scaling and Root Planing done, and she started a movie about periodontal disease and how Scaling and Root Planing helps to control periodontal disease, and when the hygienist came back, I told her to go ahead and make the appointment for me. Did you know that periodontal disease CANNOT BE CURED, only controlled. KIND OF LIKE HERPES. All those nights of half-assedly brushing my teeth before bed were coming back to roost, I guess. So my first Scaling and Root Planing appointment was yesterday, and from the video the hygienist had shown me, it was going to consist of very painful scraping with a dental instrument to get all the crap out from under my gumline. Believe you me – I was SO looking forward to THAT. Sharp dental instruments digging around in my gums? GIMME SOME OF THAT. Except that MY dentists are directly on the cutting edge of all that is cool and awesome – I mean, they have little TVs in every single exam room! – and instead of using sharp dental instruments, the hygienist used an ultrasonic instrument that basically shot medicine-tasting liquid into my gumline and cleared all the crap out of there. First, though, she had to take measurements of my gums using – you guessed it – sharp dental instruments. She poked at the gums in front of every tooth, and then in back of every tooth, calling out numbers that didn’t really mean anything to me, so that someone else could write them down. And then she gave me the Rota-dent, which is a dentist-recommended toothbrush-type instrument. She opened the package, discussed ways of taking care of the Rota-dent, and then had me open my mouth and showed me how to use the Rota-dent. Did you know that Only the Rota-dent� has patented microfilament brush tips designed to reach underneath the gum line and in-between the teeth? I bet you didn’t know that. She showed me how to hold the Rota-dent – at an angle to the tooth so that the bristles can reach under the nasty, nasty gumline – and when she turned the Rota-dent on and held it to one of my teeth, this really nasty foamy stuff came out from under my gumline. “That’s plaque,” she said. And it was nasty. But cool. And I felt like a dirty, dirty whore. I mean, who can’t brush their teeth well enough to prevent periodontal disease? ME, that’s who! And along with the nasty foamy plaque came blood. A lot of blood. Practically a geyser of blood. Every tooth she held the Rota-dent against bled like it was going out of style. After she’d brushed a few teeth, she handed over the Rota-dent and let me give it a try. Apparently I’m a natural at the Rota-dent. After a few more instructions on the care of the Rota-dent and telling me that they sell the heads to the Rota-dent there at the dentist’s office – of course they do – she put the Rota-dent back in the box, and got started on the cleaning of my nasty, nasty gums. I don’t know how much crap she got out from under my gums, but I saw a lot of stuff fly up into the air when she was doing the back gums. There were places where it hurt, but the experience wasn’t as bad as I’d feared it would be – like I said, I thought there was going to be a lot of scraping with sharp objects – and once it was over I only had the slightest bit of gum tenderness. She only did half my mouth yesterday, though. I have to go back in two weeks so she can do the other half. And in the meantime I get to brush all kinds of nasty crap out of my gumline with the Rota-dent, using some kind of medicated fluoride stuff that tastes really nasty, every single day. What could be more fun than that?
Miz Poo cools off her belly.
Mister Boogers lays and considers the fact that he has the biggest feet in all of catdom. I think he might be part rabbit.