Dear Roger: Teeth, Or Genetics Are A Funny Thing

This has been a bitch of a week. I tend to be able to ignore most pain. I have lived with broken bones that have gone untreated, I have tended to lacerations that probably should have had stitches, and I even drove myself to the hospital to have an emergency c-section when I was trying to die, but one pain kicks my ass every damn time, and that is teeth pain. Right now my ass is getting kicked pretty hard because I have 3 very severely impacted and infected wisdom teeth. I have a bit of a dentist phobia because I have had some really bad experiences, and to be honest, to get me to go to the dentist I just about have to be darted like a rogue grizzly and drug in restrained and blindfolded. Add into the phobia the fact that I dont have dental insurance or the money to get anything done about my problem, and you have the perfect storm of a hell of a problem. I have been running a fever for more than 3 days now, I have had to drain one abscess already, and the infection is making my face puffy and hot. Im living on Tylenol, Motrin and some old Vicodin that I have. I feel like I am the only 41 year old in the world dealing with this, but my mother called last night to make sure I was still breathing and she tells me that this issue is a family thing courtesy of her side of the family. It seems that weird teeth issues run in her side of the family. Great! I had problems with my teeth breaking when I was a kid, and now my wisdom teeth deciding to surface in my 40's, already bad and broken, is just the bit of fun I needed. Its not fair really, I had just been to the dentist before I left Flag, I had gotten my teeth cleaned and my front teeth had been smoothed and polished and I have one of those high dollar sonicare brushes that I use religiously along with expensive toothpaste, but its all been for naught. Im still suffering like I am a tweeker with a cotton candy habit. I dont know what I am going to do about it. I know the risks of having this kind of problem untreated, and I know I am as cranky as a grizzly with hemorrhoids, but I am just out of options at the moment. I cant afford to get them removed,and frankly the videos I have seen on the internet of it being done leave me thinking that perhaps there is just not enough sedation in the world to make me voluntarily walk into someplace that was going to do that to me.

Our family does have some interesting genetic anomalies going on, and the teeth is the least of it.I was the first in the family to have a child with a full on genetic disability and that really doesn't count, because that is often linked to many other things. But the weird curly cowlick on the back of the head, runs in family, the thumbs that can bend back til they touch the wrists is pretty common on your side, and my son has that in spades,(a little on the gross side to see your kid able to do that), blue and green eyes when there should be brown eyes, the artistic abilities and temperament that runs strong, the inability to handle alcohol,(but the desire to drink it), freckles, and probably the temper are just a few of the things I can think of. Its a blessing and a curse in some ways, and its odd to see some of the characteristics pop up our kids. I see both you and my cousin Robert in my eldest son, along with his biological father. My youngest daughter looks like me when I was her age but she acts like my sister. My middle two sons are hard to read, though Stubby is a lot like me in temperament. My kids are lucky, at least they all seem to have decent teeth, though braces are probably in the future of at least a couple of them.