Super Glue Can Spell Relief in Dental Crisis
I’ll never forget the time a temporary crown fell out of my mouth on a weeklong trip 3,000 miles from home. Ah, memories: the gross feeling against my tongue of the little stump of tooth; the jolting pain whenever I forgot for a moment and chugged back an ice-cool gulp of water; my futile attempts to push the crown back into place in the hope that this time, this time, it’d stay put--even though it had instantly fallen back out the prior 25 times. . . .
How foolish I was not to have traveled with a trusty dental first-aid kit. That’s right, folks! A few simple items squirreled away in your wash bag could mean the difference between agony and ecstasy when you’re snowed in at the family cabin with your tooth throbbing or your dentures snapped in two on Aunt Milly’s famous fruitcake.
“It’s patient power,” says Dr. Rick Diamond, of Valencia, a retired dentist and author of “Dental First Aid for Families” (Idyll Arbor, 2000). A lump of beeswax, a wad of cotton, an emery board, a tea bag, a little Super Glue, an indelible pencil--keep ‘em at hand, he says, so you can get temporary relief and go to the dentist on your schedule.
Got a toothache? Fish out your oil of cloves (it contains a natural painkiller) or plug up the cavity with a little wisp of cotton.
Bleeding from the site of an extracted tooth? Press a tea bag to the wound--tanins in the tea will stem the tide.
Chipped tooth? An emery board is oh-so-handy for filing down sharp edges. It’s also handy for filing away at chafing parts of ill-fitting dentures--after you’ve marked the site of the chafe, that is, with your trusty indelible pencil. (Rest assured, says Diamond, you will absolutely know when you’re scribbling over the sore part of your mouth.)
A problem with braces? Beeswax is just the thing when Junior’s braces have some uncomfortable sharp wire but his orthodontist is out at the golf course or busy with his stock portfolios. Simply mold the wax over those painful points.
Super Glue, meanwhile, is perfect for mending dentures that have snapped in two or lost a tooth--but those wielding the glue should go through dry run after dry run until they can align the bits of denture perfectly with their eyes closed. Or Grandma’s smile will sure look funny.
Diamond is all for patient empowerment. But there are some things he cautions against--like pulling our own teeth (though once, in a dire emergency, he did guide a close friend through a tooth-pull over the phone). Or like sticking an aspirin tablet onto an aching tooth.
“It’ll dissolve and you’ll swallow it--that’s the good part. The bad part is that aspirin is an acid--you’ll burn the dickens out of your gums,” he says. (This may help distract you from the original toothache.)
Loose crowns can be temporarily held in place with denture paste. But don’t use Super Glue in your mouth, Diamond begs, unless you want to help your dentist pay for that new yacht. If you stick a crown back on wrong, you’re stuck with it until your dentist grinds it out, and you fork over $600 for a new one. Ha. I knew that.
Animal Tendencies
Not long ago, a friend applied for a job and was immediately subjected to a battery of psychological tests, aimed--we assume--at unearthing tendencies toward office-supply theft, coming in late on Mondays, leaving early on Fridays or making calls to Mom on company time.
Even athletes--NFL football players, as well as increasing numbers of college and high school sports teams--are getting psychological tests these days, we learn from Robert Troutwine, an “industrial psychologist” based in Liberty, Mo., who conducts these kinds of tests for a living. And beware: The most innocent-seeming questions can betray deep-rooted tendencies. Take the innocuous query: Would you rather be a cat or a dog?
“A dog is man’s best friend,” says Troutwine. A cat is more independent.” Thus, the athlete who answers “dog” will have more of a drive to be a good team player, he says. As for the one who answers “cat”: “You have to let him feel like he’s making the decisions.”
Me, I’d sooner be a cat than a dog any day. (From now on, they’ve assured me, I get to write this column exactly how I want. . . . Why are they winking and nudging like that?)
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