…But after years of qualifying statements to the effect with "sooner or later", I seriously have to do something about my fucked-up teeth. The Yellowing, which I attributed to months of morning tea earlier this year, isn't subsiding in the least (which I attribute to the subsequent months of morning am/pm Mountain Dew), and today the rear view mirror at 70mph revealed a large chip in the enamel up towards the gum on my other front tooth.

Sometime recently in my life I've developed a terrible dentophobia; less anti-dentite specifically, but more of an anti-oral fixation. I would explain, anything that goes in my mouth stays there. No ribs, cherries, or even gum for me. Could it be some manifestation of latent homosexuality? Or a condition exacerbated by my ordeal with that peritonsilar abcess a while back? (On the subject of the latter, I had this to say at the time:

:-(}) becomes :-(o). You'd think the viruses and bacteria of the world had better things to do, like changing the course of evolution or staving off alien invasions, than making it ever so difficult for a lone diner at Burger King to put down every bite of his Whopper. Each swallow was an ordeal, like passing a kidney stone must be. Speech could only bubble up from under the rising saliva, or be helped over the top by my nose. Turns out my uvula, that thing in your mouth hanging over the opening to the throat you only see when people scream in cartoons, was swollen to four times its usual size. You know you have a special condition when the ENT doctor calls in a few of his colleagues to take a look. (Either that, or he needed their assistance to restrain my gag reflexes.) And there, in the car mirror outside Rite-Aid while my prescriptions for antibiotics and steroids and painkillers were being filled, resting on my tongue was a drool-coated mass of flesh the size and shape, for lack of another anatomical analogue, of a testicle--and that coming from either my encounter with the edible kind or equally unforgettable photos of lymphatic filariasis. It was back to normal a day later, but I wasn't, as I fell victim first to an allergic reaction to Augmentin (otherwise the tastiest liquid medication, reminding me of Calpis), then to a follow-up ER diagnosis of a peritonsilar abcess (as unsightly as it may be, I prefer my pus on the outside of my face), if not to all those managed heatlth care co-pay fees in general.

Pre-blog era.) I have a gag reflex that I was afraid might've killed that poor little Jewish ENT doctor who had the arduous task of lancing it. Then there's that recurring dream of biting into something I shouldn't and losing all my teeth. Let's just hope the PPO covers the therapy for all these issues, too.