Tuesday night I was lying in bed eating a “fun size” bag of peanut M&Ms. First of all, what’s so fun about eight tiny pieces of candy? A fun size portion should contain about three pounds. There is nothing fun about eight M&Ms in a cute little bag. More candy equals more fun. True story.
So I was lying in bed reading and eating my nightly chocolate ration when I bit down and crunched into something very hard. Hmmm. Must be a burnt peanut, an M&M that weaseled it’s way through quality control and into my fun size packet. No worries, work it over with my teeth a little more and I’m sure it’ll succumb to a happy peanut paste existence. CRUNCH. Wow, this nut’s not giving up. A tough nut to crack, if you will. You know what? Maybe it’s not a nut. Maybe it’s a thicker part of the thin candy shell that makes them melt in my mouth and not in my hand. CRUNCH. Nope. That’s not right. I pushed the piece to the front of my mouth with my tongue and removed it like it was a stray dog hair. I looked down at it and realized that this wasn’t a peanut or a piece of the thin candy shell. Uh-oh.
I hesitantly rolled my tongue around my mouth, flicking it over each tooth just to make sure everything was where it should be. Except that it wasn’t. Near the very back of my mouth, my tongue immediately noticed a difference. The next to last tooth on the bottom right side now had a gaping hole in the side. I pushed my tongue as far as it would go into the hole. Compared to the piece of what I now knew to be tooth, the hole was huge. This could only mean one thing.
I ate part of my tooth. It must have gotten mixed in with the thin candy shell and I didn’t even know it.
This was definitely not the highlight of my day because it carried with it several implications: One, I wasn’t going to get to finish the rest of my M&Ms. And it would drive me nuts (pun intended) to know that there were two M&Ms left hanging out in the tiny bag. Two, I was going to have to make a dreaded emergency trip to the dentist as soon as possible because I definitely don’t want to risk getting an infection in the tooth, forcing me to have another root canal. Three, until I could make the cringe-inducing trip I was probably going to be on a liquid diet, which meant Slim Fast shakes for every meal. And fourth, and most alarming, I JUST ATE PART OF MY SKELETAL SYSTEM.
It’s odd how things that probably wouldn’t frighten you during the day become major catastrophes under the dark of night. A person could easily say , “Oh well. I’ll call the dentist tomorrow and get it fixed in the afternoon and be back in fighting shape by nightfall.” and go back to reading her book. I am not that person. And that is not how my mind works. Especially not at night. After the full realization that I JUST ATE PART OF MY OWN HEAD sunk in, I wondered how I had eaten something like that and not even known it. This just corroborates my recent thoughts that I definitely need to chew my food better. (I realized this when I threw up a hot dog and looked at the size of the pieces laying in the parking lot and my first thought was “I could totally put those pieces back together to form a hot dog puzzle.)
So now my tooth was on a journey that could not be stopped. I’m no doctor so I don’t know the entire medical process of where it was going but I did know where it would eventually end up. And here’s how I am concerned that the journey might go:
I swallowed part of my skeleton. It will journey down to my stomach where it will sway gently among the English toffee cappuccino I had on the way to my appointment this morning, colliding with the white cheddar popcorn that I had during my Mary Higgins Clark movie this afternoon. (It’s hard to focus on a movie while chewing on one side of your mouth with your head turned sideways so that no stray popcorn pieces goes careening over into the cavernous hole.) Eventually it will travel down through my intestines and out of my body among some poop. This is where my concern kicks in. The tooth is all jaggedy. I can tell that by the size and shape of the gaping hole it left behind. This means that it will surely rock back and forth in the stomach juices, threatening to puncture my stomach lining, sending white cheddar popcorn bits and cappuccino onto my organs via my torn stomach. If, by some lucky twist of fate, the tooth doesn’t puncture my stomach and escape into my vital organs, it will travel down through my intestines in a mix of digested stuff that will at some point, if it hasn’t already, turn into poo. (Again, I don’t know the medical process. I don’t even want to know. The less I know about the way my body functions, the less likely I am to faint.)
I texted my fears to my friend Romy, who tends to be the voice of reason when I board my crazy train.
Me: I’m scared to eat. I’m afeared (Yes I use the word afeared.) I’ll eat part of my tooth. (which I had already done.) Literally I could digest part of my skeletal system…
Romy: Then you’ll just poop it out. No problem! (Because it’s normal to poop out part of your skeleton.)
Me: I’ve given this some thought: what if it’s jaggedy and tears a whole in my intestines and poop leaks all over my body? I could die.
Romy: It won’t. It will be so covered with thick gunk that it will just glide through.
Me: I’m an idiot. A hole. (Bet you thought I wouldn’t catch that.)
Me: You can’t guarantee that. It could settle on the outer fringe of my poo and tear me open like the titanic.
Romy: Nope. (Very reassuring. I think this is when she realized that the crazy train had already left the station and the only thing she could do was ride along. Truth be told she was probably checking between her toes for lint at this point. )
Me: You are not a doctor. I know things.
Romy: I know more than you. (This is debatable. But I think she was throwing stuff on the wall to see what would stick and if she could get me on her side, she would win and the crazy train could be stopped before it turned into a wreck.)
Me: Not about me and the way my body works.
Romy: Your poop isn’t different than anybody else’s! I’ve been pooping for 48 years…How about you? (Ah the age card. Normally I play the age card about her being so old and me still being young. Reverse Ageism, well-played, Romy.)
Me: You got me there. You are, in fact, the elder pooper.
I don’t know what made me give up and accept her age answer but I did. For some reason that I now cannot explain, I accepted the fact that because she had been pooping longer than me, that she was more of an expert on the subject of what happens when one’s tooth takes this unnatural journey through the body. So after first accepting her explanation and logic of what would happen to my tooth, my reality has taken back over and I know that right now there is a tooth floating around somewhere in my body, wreaking havoc on my system. For all I know, that bit of denture is somewhere in my intestines, on the outer fringe of my oncoming poo, just waiting to bump into the walls of the intestine and leak poop and toxins all over my body. It will stick out of the poo and scrape it’s way down the intestine, tearing a lengthy hole in me, which is how my body will then fill with poop. My organs will be soaking in waste and I will eventually die from the poison. And the band will play on as it happens…
I have an appointment tomorrow afternoon to get the tooth taken care of. Bad news: another trip to the dentist. Good news: I will probably have more fodder for my blog.
Toothberg dead ahead!
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That's Not Appropriate 