Fresh Tomatoes

Tomatoes. I love them when they are fresh from the garden, picked five minutes before you eat them. I love to stand at the kitchen sink, tomato in one hand, salt shaker in the other, eating a sweet juicy tomato like an apple, with the juice running down to my elbows.  When I don’t have a garden, I get the freshest ones I can get from the grocery store.

One night about two weeks ago, I was standing at the kitchen counter, making a chef salad. As I was slicing a tomato to add to the salad, I took the bottom slice, the flower end of the tomato, and grabbed it with my teeth, to scrape off the juicy tomato meat from the skin, something I have been doing ever since I had my first kitchen more than forty years ago. Suddenly, there was a tremendous pain in my mouth! Somehow, the action of pulling the tomato slice between my teeth had caused one of my lower front teeth to become loose!

Well, the one under that one. I have an overbite, so my bottom teeth don’t show much, but I really would feel self conscious if that tooth came out. I have been eating soft stuff since then, or at least trying to avoid biting something like a taco or other hard food with my front teeth. Everything is being eaten with a fork. I have been brushing softly, very softly, to prevent the tooth getting any looser than it is.  It has been about two weeks now, and it does seem like the tooth is tightening back up but I am not going to be taking any chances with it.

I need to go to a dentist, but since I have no insurance, I am trying to figure out how to pay for the dental work, or at least find out how much it will cost to try to save this tooth. If I can’t save it, I will either have to have a tooth added to my partial plate, IF that can be done, or get the rest of the teeth extracted and get a lower denture plate. Oh, the decisions you have to make as you get older!