Bastard tooth!

Or bastard root, as the case might be.

I was hit in the mouth by a baseball when I was ten. People lacking athletic inclinations, take note - this is what you get for being nice to sporty young cousins. People who are amused by my mental processes (like glimmergirl ) will be interested to note that I worked out the age by looking up the release date of Who Framed Roger Rabbit on the IMDB. After driving from the New Hampshire campsite back to Boston to get my mouth examined by the orthodontist, who concluded that were it not for the braces I'd have lost the tooth, my father took me to see Roger Rabbit.

Years pass. I struggle through junior high, graduate from high school, go to college. Sometime in the second half of college the affected tooth changes color. The dentist asks me if I've hurt it, but the long-ago baseball incident never comes to mind. I graduate from college, begin grad school, and go three years without darkening a dentist's door. Finally, two weeks ago, I went for a cleaning and x-rays, and my new dentist noted the discoloration and some slight oddity of the root, commenting that sometime it would be good to see an endodontist. 'Not next week, but sometime.'

So yesterday, after being completely well behaved for fifteen years, what happens? The tooth starts to hurt. And it's still at it. And I am getting on a plane and freaking going overseas on Tuesday. It is difficult to be properly awed and appreciative of one's good fortune when between one and it there is a pile of crap. On the plus side, my health insurance woes have (touch wood) been resolved, but on the minus the plan does not seem to have any endodontists within twenty miles of my location. There seems to be a practice in ARLINGTON VIRGINIA that I could get to by metro, if I've not muffed the address, but it would take a full hour. (My dentist did give me a name for some folks, but they're in Rockville, which is about as accessible as Zanzibar to a carless grad student. And they're not covered by said insurance.)