Back to the dentist again!

The other day, while I was eating my Raisin Bran for breakfast, I bit down on something very hard, and heard a nasty "crunch". Figured it was a hard raisin, and didn't think about it anymore, until the toothaches started. On Monday I got the flashlight and inspected my sore molar, and saw that it was fractured along the top.

After some deliberations, and nagging by Marlene, I called my dentists in Nogales, Mexico, and made an appointment for this morning. Marlene shot a picture of me in the chair, with the dentist and his assistant.

Well, they shot a bunch of x-rays, and poked around, then told me they would have to numb the area and pull the two sides of my broken tooth apart to see if it could be saved with a root canal. No such luck, it needed to be extracted.

In the end, the dentist had to cut open my gum, use a micro-saw to cut the roots from the jaw bone, then using brute force pull out the bits of tooth. The whole procedure took just under an hour and a half. I was given prescriptions for pain killers, antibiotics, and something to keep the swelling down.

All done, and I was presented with a bill for $100. They apologized, usually they only charge $60 for a molar extraction, but that is without the need for surgery to free the tooth.

We walked back to the border, and stopped at a pharmacy to fill my prescriptions, then had to wait a little over an hour in the line-up to cross into the US. Marlene was so worried about my pain, that using gestures she asked the security guy if we could jump to the head of the line. He balked until I opened my mouth and showed him the big bleeding hole in my gum. Then he waved us forward and we finally got to the US immigration officer, who listened to Marlene's story about this being the first time I had ever had a tooth extracted, and immediately waved us through, after reminding us to save the tooth for the tooth fairy!

After the dentist, we went and filled up our jerry cans with kerosene for the jet car. Boy, kerosene is expensive here, over $5 a gallon with tax. Good thing our car only uses about a gallon and half a minute. The really big jets use 75 gallons a minute or more.

Tomorrow we will take care of all the little details, like mail forwarding, returning our rental car, etc. and get ready for any early Friday departure to the east. I've attached our dental pics above. Stay tuned....