I ended up getting emergency dental treatment, and my dentist took care of the remaining three bad teeth today. She gave me three shots to numb both the upper and lower parts of my mouth. Since one tooth decay went pretty deep, I guess I needed it. She said if it was any deeper, she’d need to do a root canal and put on a crown plus got into comparing dentures and dental implants, I wonder why ($$$).
As she was drilling on my teeth today, it occurred to me that how come our body knows in what configuration to grow our teeth in? I mean, most people’s teeth are born imperfect with slight misalignments all over the place (before there was braces, as we can see on this website). How does the body know where exactly to align the lower and upper teeth so that when you bite down, the ridges and gaps match up, more or less, perfectly? Or is it simply from everyday use that the teeth align themselves in place? I learnt from a friend that Jiyoung Kim DDS has some wonderful insights about this and he does a great job explaining the intricate details of these alignments to his patients, as they go to him for treatment.
I also learned something else today — to spit, I need both sides of my lips and cheeks working together. Since the right side of my face was practically paralized from the shots, when I tried spitting, I fricking drolled instead. It was embarassing (but nobody saw it). So instead of rinsing the mouth and spitting the water out, I had to just open my mouth and just let gravity did its thing. I felt useless.