Harry Shearer of Spinal Tap and The Simpsons has some fun with the TSA in this video. If you’re easily offended, move along, there’s nothing to see here:

Simpsons fans will hear a lot of Flanders in this clip, by the way. Happy weekend!

Several months ago I mentioned in passing that I was facing an “obscenely large” dental bill.  This post is about that experience.  It’s a bit of a departure from the content I usually post, and I hope you enjoy it.

About 10 years ago I made a decision which could only be described – and this, mind you, would be if you were being extremely charitable – as purely imbecilic. I was in possession of a remarkably dangerous combination:  a lingering dissatisfaction with a gap between a couple of my teeth, overly generous medical/dental coverage, and a remarkable lack of clear thinking.

Enter Dr. Lew

“What can we do about this gap, Lew?” I asked the elfish Dr. Lew M., my dentist at the time.

“Why, we could grind down the two adjoining teeth and attach a bridge to them which will eliminate that nasty gap,” he said brightly, no doubt thrilled at the realization that he’d just snagged another Porsche payment.

“Well, that sounds like a splendid idea!  Just so I understand, you’d like to take two good teeth that have nothing wrong with them, grind the hell out of them so that they’ll be otherwise completely useless, glue three fake teeth onto them, thereby eliminating that gap that no one ever sees and only one person has mentioned to me in the last thirty years?  You, sir, are a genius!! It is an honor to be associated with such brilliance. When can we get started, and can I give you some money right now?,” I exclaimed, reaching for my wallet.

I embellish, but only slightly.

And that’s basically what we did.  A little grinding here, a bit of glue there, and a couple of visits later, I was the proud owner of a shiny new dental bridge which eliminated that gap which no one (save my mother in law – honest!) had mentioned in 30 years.  And everything was just peachy, or so I thought, for nearly a decade…

Flash forward to several months ago:  I’m sitting in my office studiously avoiding work, eating some sort of vaguely synthetic/rubbery/chewy “fruit” snack I got out of the cafeteria vending machine.

Absent mindedly munching away, I suddenly felt something odd.

“That felt strange,” I thought.  So I did what any red blooded American male would do:  I popped another of the snacks in my mouth.

I chewed for a second or two, and then all hell broke loose: things were falling apart, disaster movie style, in my mouth.  I felt something that hadn’t previously been there – something hard.  Reaching in, I found it, and pulled out…     Dr. Lew’s Porsche payment bridge.  “Oh, that’s not good,” I thought.

I have always been quick.

In my right hand desk drawer I have a small mirror that I periodically use to admire my rugged good looks (did I mention I am also mildly delusional)?  I pulled it out and examined the two previously healthy, now pointy and useless teeth.  One was spectacular:  nice and white, and ever so pointy.  The other, however, was not so magnificent.  If I worked at Crayola, I’d name its color “Cigar Wrapper Brown.” For the record, this is not a good color for teeth of any sort.

Dr. Mark, desirous of new office furniture, takes over

So I called the office of Dr. Mark (my dentist here in The Middle of Nowhere) and begged an audience.   Clearly trained to recognize an incremental revenue opportunity, the receptionist told me to come over right away. When I arrived a few minutes later,  I was whisked into an examination room.  When Mark entered and mentioned the bridge, I opened with, “Well, I’m no dentite, but I think I’ve got a serious issue with one of the teeth this thing was attached to.”

“Well, let me be the judge of that,”  he said, a bit dismissively, flipping on the light.  I opened wide.  He peered in.

“Oh yeah, that’s not good,” he mumbled.  “It’s,” he paused, poking and probing the tooth a bit, “spongy.”

“I’m guessing ‘spongy’ is not a desirable quality in teeth, yes?”  I offered, grimacing.

“Yes.  This is not a good thing.”

“What options do we have?”

“Hmm.  I need to think about this for a bit,” he said, which I’m fairly certain is code for “I think I’ve finally discovered a way to get that stamped concrete driveway.”

He then launched into a sort of stream of consciousness monologue peppered with a bunch of dentalese  which sounded both menacing and expensive:  “…#12 has to come out, can’t mount a bridge to one tooth and an implant, lemme see those x-rays, hmm, jawbone thin at that point, will need to be built up a bit, two implants minimum, not a lot of room there, new reception area furniture, hmm, previous root canal on #9…”

OK, I admit it, I threw in that bit about new furniture, but this was the gist of what he was saying. None of it sounded good.

Once Mark had determined that I was sufficiently terrified, he glued my old bridge back in place over the decayed tooth and its healthy partner, and set up an appointment for me with another dentist in town who specializes in dental implants.  Finally, he presented me with an estimate that totaled over five large.  And he and his assistant guessed that the fee from Dr. Barry (the specialist) would also  likely be around $5K.

As I was leaving the office, I stopped at the desk of the woman who handles insurance issues for the office.  “Do you have any questions?” she asked.

“Yeah I have a question – WHY GOD, WHY??  WHY ME?!?“  I theatrically shouted.  She and the assistant who was escorting me both laughed.  I can’t imagine what any other patients in the office were thinking, but that wasn’t my biggest concern at the moment.

My mind reeling, I went back to the office.  This was going to cost me $10K+.  My crappy dental insurance covers $1K annually, and my wife and I had already chewed up (ha) about $500 of that.  And we were leaving for Italy in about a month, for a 10 day vacation.  In technical terms, I was screwed.

“What exactly is a dental implant?”

…you may be wondering.  A dental implant is a titaniuim screw that a dentist uses to extract approximately $1800 from your wallet.

All seriousness aside, it’s essentially a screw that is implanted in your jawbone, and which serves as a root or base for dental restorations – in my case, a bridge.  The dentist – and I am not making this up – drills a hole into your jawbone, and the implant is screwed into place.  The jawbone and implant bond to one another over time (this is called “osseointegration” by dentists, and “liability avoidance” by me).  This requires two to six months, after which your restoration – be it a single tooth or bridge – is attached to the implant or implants.

In my case, both teeth had to be removed, two implants put in their place, and while the bone and implants did their osseointegration thing, I’d have to wear a temporary, removable device called a “flipper.”  All I’ll say about the “flipper” at this point is, if there’s someone in your life you absolutely hate, start hoping he or she someday has to wear one of these things.

What followed over the next few weeks – as I had molds taken locally, and a CAT scan done at the dental school in Lincoln – was a debate between myself and the dentists regarding WHEN to have the two teeth extracted and the implants installed.  I favored doing it after our trip, and they of course held the opposing view.

They pointed out that the decayed tooth could totally go south on me at any time, and if that happened in Italy it’d ruin our trip, and so forth.  I’d counter with something along the lines that this tooth had been going bad for a long time, and what’s another month or so, and so on.  Fear triumphed, of course, and I had the surgery performed exactly 10 days before we departed for Rome.  In the end, I didn’t want to risk having anything spoil our vacation.

“You won’t like it,” Dr. Mark said during one of my visits, describing the “flipper” – a retainer-like device with teeth on it that I’d wear while everything healed.  “It’ll clip on to your teeth in the back of your mouth.  You can eat with it, but you’ll want to take it out each night.  Believe me, you’ll WANT to take it out each night.”

If he said “You won’t like it” once, he said it five times. 

In retrospect, hindsight being what it is and all, this would have been a really swell time for me to say something along the lines of, “IS THERE AN ALTERNATIVE?”

But I didn’t, and he didn’t offer that there was a viable alternative, so they had a lab prepare this “flipper”/retainer as the day of the surgery approached.

Surgery day, aka Dr. Barry lays his best lines on me

My surgery was scheduled for 7AM on a Thursday.  Things got underway right at 7, and  Barry – from what I could tell, my perspective somewhat limited as I was all juiced up on Novocaine and had a cloth over my eyes most of the time – did an utterly fantastic job.  He was very methodical and professional, and kept things light mostly by talking about his training as he worked.  He pulled both teeth and then worked on placing the implants.  Things were going along swimmingly until he said, and this is verbatim:  “This next little bit is going to be the most memorable part of this experience.”

“Uh, what do you mean,” I chirped, noticing that my voice was suddenly an octave higher than normal.

“Well, sometimes the implant doesn’t want to quite seat itself properly, and I have to tap on it a bit.  So, this will be a bit disconcerting.”

He then proceeded to tap on the implant in question with some sort of hammer about four or five times.  Words do not exist in the English language to do this experience justice. It was as though I’d been thrust into a Looney Tunes cartoon and Daffy Duck was repeatedly thumping my skull with a giant steel mallet.

“Uh, how many times are you going to do that?” I squeaked, aware that little beads of sweat had suddenly popped up all over my body.

“Well, a few, probably – we’ll just see what it takes.”  Then, in a line he’d undoubtedly delivered before, he offered, “There is an alternative to this, but most of my patients aren’t interested when they find out it adds 9 months and $1700 to the process.”

“Swing away, Merrill,” I barked, suddenly tolerant of having my jaw bone whacked.  “Give it your best shot!” It was remarkable how my attitude changed when I heard “$1700.”

He did in fact do another four series of taps, and then finished up without incident.  I have a vague recollection of him using what seemed like a socket wrench to screw the little bastards into place.  An intern had been present for the entire procedure, and when we were done I asked her if she’d learned a lot.  Wide eyed and white as a sheet, she nodded.

We were done by 9AM, and I headed over to Mark’s office to be fitted with the “flipper,”  and this is where things took a turn for the worse, as if that was possible.

Thingth take a turn for the wortht

“Well, here it is,” Mark produced the flipper shortly after my arrival.  It was simply a retainer with three teeth that were to fill the gap where the old bridge used to be.   Mind you, I was still numb from the Novocaine, but even given that, it didn’t seem to fit all that well.  I headed home, hoping it would get better.

It didn’t.  If you want to replicate what trying to talk with a retainer in your mouth is like, spread a quarter inch thick layer of peanut butter on the roof of your mouth, or just stick a hockey puck in your mouth.

For decades I’d only had the usual stuff in there – teeth, roof of mouth, tongue, gums, the occasional Krispy Kreme donut, and so forth.

Now I had all the normal stuff plus this plasticy piece of crap.  This thing was wonderful, other than one minor detail:  I couldn’t eat or speak with it in.

Oh, I could eat alright, but food became lodged between the top of the retainer and the roof of my mouth within an instant of trying to eat anything.  For example, if I were to eat a Quarter Pounder, about an eighth of a pound wouldn’t make it past the flipper, necessitating a Hazcom-type clean up immediately after eating.

But on a positive note, speaking was much, much worse. I found myself having to think about what I wanted to say, and how I would form the words before attempting to speak.

Even the simplest of statements required Bobby Fisher-like levels of concentration.  And despite all the mental gymnastics, a simple sentence such as, “What time is it?” usually ended up coming out as, “Thup time ith thit?”

I’d taken surgery day off in order to rest and let the Novocaine wear off.  The next morning Julie, my secretary, was working at the reception desk when I arrived at work:  “Hey!  How’d it go?”

“Uh, it went pretty well,” I carefully enunciated, “How do I thound?”

“Uh, ok, but you have a bit of a lisp.”

“Ugh, thath not ethactly what I whath hopith to hear,” I muttered, shuffling off to my office dejectedly.

This went on for 4 dayth.  At times I’d just give up, take the flipper out, and try to speak in such a way that my upper lip concealed the gap in my teeth.   At home, I never wore the thing.  On the 4th day I had a follow-up appointment with Mark.  I wasn’t wearing the flipper when he came into the office.

“This thing (shaking the flipper’s case so he could hear it rattling) is perfect, other than I can’t eat or speak with it,” I offered when he appeared.  “We leave for Italy this coming weekend.  Is there anything we can do that doesn’t involve this thing??”

“Well, we could try an Essex bridge.”

“Huh?? What’s that?” I said, wondering why this didn’t come up in our earlier conversations.

“It’s basically an Invisalign retainer with the missing teeth replaced.  It’s a lot smaller, and doesn’t cover your palate.”

I stared at him for about 5 seconds in utter disbelief, hoping I was mustering my very best “ARE YOU F#&KING SERIOUS?” look.  “Are you serious?  Of course!  How long would it take to get that?”

“I still have your molds, so I could make one up tonight, and fit you tomorrow.  Keep in mind, you can’t eat with it installed, but you’ll find speaking much easier.”

That’s what we did.  I used the Essex bridge for the next three months, until the new bridge was installed.  It was a bit of a pain – but I became really skilled at slipping the bridge out surreptitiously in restaurants, and hiding the gap with my upper lip as I spoke.  At least I think I did.  For all I know, a waiter at every restaurant we visited in Italy ran back into the kitchen, yelling, “Hey, that American ata number seexa:  heesa gotta beega gappa in his teeth!!”

All seriousness aside…

By the way:  if anyone ever tells you that you need a dental implant, there’s a thorough entry on this subject at Wikipedia, if you’re curious.  The success rate is around 95%, incidentally.

Fortunately, I fall into that group.  I visited Barry a few days ago for a check-up – it’s been 5 months since the permanent bridge was installed – and all is fine.  I’ll see him in another year to make sure the jawbone and implants are ok, and then I’ll be completely done.

This isn’t something I’d recommend you do for entertainment, but if you need to have it done, make sure you work with a dental surgeon who’s done this procedure a lot of times, and be aware of the Essex bridge option, if your procedure involves a bridge.

A final thought: if you have a little gap in your teeth that isn’t especially troublesome, let it go.  And if ANYONE suggests you wreck a couple of perfectly good teeth in order to “fix” that gap, run – don’t walk – out of that office!  I’m theriouth!

…and please, Person Who Writes Caution Label Copy For A Living, why are “OPEN” and “IN” in quotation marks?  Do you not understand that they are not only unnecessary, but in fact imply the opposite of what you intend to say?   “Good” work!

These things make their way around the internet so quickly, perhaps you’ve seen this; if not, it’s worth a quick look.  Although some have commented that the spot is “creepy” ( ? ), I think it’s hysterical.  I’ll be back with a couple of product reviews next week; have a great weekend!

My apologies for not following up earlier on the fate of my old Dell desktop that pulled a full Christian Bale-like meltdown a couple months ago – other projects and commitments have interrupted work on this post and I’d permanently pushed Part II to the back burner.  A week or so ago one of my readers reminded me that I’d left her hanging, so here I am with the second installment.  For those of you who missed the earlier post, my old PC gave suddenly opted for a full work stoppage a couple of months ago…   read about it here.

As mentioned at the end of Part I, although the machine was largely crippled, I was able to launch several programs by using Windows Task Manager (via hitting Ctrl-Alt-Delete) – Firefox, FileZilla, RoboForm and a couple of other programs.  By doing so I was able to limp along for a week or so, keeping up with emails and posting to Practical Hacks. But I felt about as secure as Jeff Conaway at a DEA convention:  try as I may, I could NOT figure out a way to launch my virus scanning software; it almost seemed to have been partly removed.  Given the way the machine acted when all this started (a suspicious-looking warning about virus protection), I was nervous.

At a loss to figure out what had happened to the PC, and absolutely, positively 100% convinced it was now little more than a large, annoying boat anchor, I ordered a new Inspiron 530 from DELL and brought the old unit to my IT guy at work, Randy, hoping that maybe he’d be able to salvage something from it.  (Fortunately, In a lucid moment a couple of years ago I’d purchased an external hard drive and had regularly backed up all my critical files.)

Over the last several years Randy has helped me with a few computer and software-related issues. Contrary to the geeky IT-guy stereotype, he is one of the funniest people I have ever met. Whether on the golf course, in the office on a “normal” workday, or in the midst of a crisis (e.g., your random tornado striking town) Randy always keeps the mood light.  I’m not doing him justice here – some of his antics are legend around the company – but his most brilliant work isn’t suitable for Practical Hacks.  And as an added bonus, he’s good at his job – nothing I’ve thrown at him has ever stumped him.

So my hopes were high the afternoon I dropped off the PC and an envelope containing all the disks that came with it.  I’d explained that I’d tried to run my anti-virus software without success and mentioned the other few pathetic attempts I’d made at resurrecting the PC, and then left him with the entire mess, hoping he’d be able to run some diagnostics on it overnight.

The next morning I found him sitting at his desk.  Something odd had happened.  Gone were his wisecracks and wacky world view; in fact, his entire sense of humor seemed to have vanished.  He literally was clutching his head, staring blankly at a monitor when I entered.

“Hey.  Is that my PC you’re looking at?”   He looked as though he’d just discovered his wife had secretly posted a profile on Match.com

“Uh, yeah.  Uh, I don’t know WHAT is going on with this thing.  I’ve tried everything I can think of,” he mumbled, “What exactly were you doing when this happened??“  By this I’m fairly certain he meant, “Exactly which porn site were you on when this happened?”

I reassured him that I’d been doing nothing worse than stumbling sites when the weird pop-up uh, popped up.  He then mentioned that the System Recovery Disk (or whatever it’s called; I write this from memory) was missing.  I suddenly remembered that I’d bought that particular Dell on eBay – was there a chance that it’d been shipped without the disk??  No idea.  All the disks I had were in the envelope I’d given him.

We agreed that I’d search for the disk again at home, and much to his chagrin, he’d bring in reinforcements in the form of one of his colleagues.  I walked back to my office wishing I worked at Sterling Cooper with the other Mad Men – at least that way I could’ve had a drink!

I never did find the disk. I’m willing to admit to many faults, but I don’t believe I could have lost it; part of my new computer/gadget routine is to put all the documentation and other “stuff” in a large envelope in a specific spot in my study.  I think I never got it when I bought it from someone on eBay.

As for Randy, he eventually was able to restore my desktop, defrag the hard drive and get the thing to run.  He warned that it’s on its last legs. In the final analysis he didn’t think it actually was a virus or Trojan, but rather a file had gotten corrupted.  (That’s what it gets for being on my PC, I guess; perhaps it’s related to my puerile political perspective.)  One thing came through the experience in much better shape than my computer; I am happy to report that Randy’s sense of humor was fully restored.

The computer sits alongside the new Inspiron, and frankly it’s off 95% of the time.  I never did manage to get my McAfee virus protection to run on it, nor could I reinstall it – I tried 4 or 5 times.  Eventually I installed a free virus scan program from AGV, and that’s been fine.  I bought a Belkin “Switch 2″ so I could toggle between the two units, sharing the monitor, speakers, keyboard and mouse.  It’s a slick set-up but frankly the old PC is about as stable as Octomom so it’s off much of the time.

What triggered the meltdown? I am guessing it was a case of an old (~6-7 years) computer onto which I’d installed WAY too much software.  One of the things I did when I brought it home was to dump all the crap I never or hardly ever used and defragment the hard drive again.

As for the new computer, I’m being much more discriminating when it comes to installing software on it.

Now if Randy could just identify a way to prevent the merry pranksters over at DreamHost from crashing my server 3-4 times a day (it crashed while I was composing this) I’d be all set!

Ever have a computer completely come unhinged on you?  If yes, please share by commenting; misery loves company!