The Value of Gold

Last Friday, I thought I’d make something simple for dinner. You know, just to use up a few things from the fridge before our Munich weekend, so I decided to make omelettes. What could go wrong? Well, let me tell you.

The omelettes were delicious, but after the meal, I felt something (probably a piece of ham) between my upper left molars. Orange-X has a habit of always using toothpicks after a meal, so I asked him to bring one for me as well. I started picking and all of o sudden, I felt a “plop” in my mouth. No, it wasn’t a champagne cork; I open them with my hands, not with my teeth… Although, once I… Oh forget it. So I checked with my tongue and felt that something was rough on the edge. All of a sudden, I had this huge piece of gold filling just sitting on my tongue. Ooops!

I tried to get a hold of my dentist on Saturday morning, but all he had was an emergency number of a clinic. Luckily enough, the filling fell from a tooth where I had had a root canal, so no more nerves there. I was pain free. Great! I just had to be careful, because there’s not that much tooth left around the hole, so I chew on the right side for now. So, I just left a message on his answering machine t say that I’d call in on Monday morning.

On Monday morning, I called up my dentist and got his secretary, who was nice enough to give me an appointment for 1 pm that same day. At 12:30, I was on my way to the garage. I sat in my car, turned the key and… silence…. nothing…. Absolutely NOTHING, but a very dead battery. Arghhhghghgh!! Anyhow, I ran back into the house to call my dentist and tell him that I wouldn’t make it in time. *Next appointment available: yesterday at 5.30 pm.

I walked into the dentist’s office and was immediately guided to the off-white leather chaise longue while the nice assistant fitted me with one of those ugly green bibs. Dr. Kolb walked in and greeted me. I remembered that I had brought the filling with me so I took it out of my purse and handed it to him. He checked the gold filling and then the hole in my tooth. “Perfect”, he said, “I can re-use this”. No further damage to the tooth or the filling. So he **sandblasted the remains of “cement” on the gold filling and did the same to the cavity in my molar. During the treatment, he told me that had the filling not been gold, he would have had to reconstruct the tooth and that would have cost me gazillions again. In less than 25 minutes, my tooth was fixed, good as new and I was on my way back home.

However, while he was putting my filling back in place, he apologised more than once for his mistake. He had put too little “cement” on the filling the first time. Again, when I left, we shook hands and he said: „Again, I’m very sorry for this Mrs CS, it was really my mistake.”

Ahh. The value of gold… and of a good dentist. I wonder if I’ll ever see the bill.


* My car is running again.
**Note: they use salt and water and not sand for this