by Vickie Marcy

Created on: October 13, 2007

Never, never try to glue a filling back into it's rightful place with super glue! My day had been rather on the good side until I decided to chew on some hard candy. Bad idea; I felt the filling hit my tongue and within seconds had retreived it. My tongue found the huge hole that the filling had recently vacated, as I stared at the filling wondering why everything like this always has to happen on a weekend day!

I knew I would get in asap to see my dentist on Monday; this was Saturday and I had to work. I suddenly remembered someone saying a small piece of chewing gum jammed into a cavity hole would remedy the situation until medical help could be had. Not! The filling had taken a piece of my front tooth, hence, the gum had another space to squeeze into. Smiling at myself in the mirror, I realized that small gray bubble was the gum protruding through the hole in my front tooth.

As I scraped the gum off, the idea came to me to fix the hole temporarily with super glue. Five minutes of drying my inside lip, teeth, and gums led to another five minutes of trying to fit the filling back onto my front tooth, from the back, where the filling fell out. I discovered I could hold the filling carefully on my thumb and gently press it back into place...perfect fit! As I stood holding the filling in place, I picked up the tube of super glue and remembered the small hole in the front of my tooth.

The chain of events that followed that fateful decision are: super glue smells and tastes more foul than I can put words to; the glue moved faster than the speed of light through the small hole and to the back of my tooth...where my thumb was holding the filling in place. Things get a bit hazy after that point, but I remember my thumb was stuck fast to my tooth, my upper lip managed to become stuck tight to the side of my tooth, my tongue ran up to see what was going on and suddenly found itself glued to my thumb.

I panicked when I looked up and saw the contorted, tortured face in the mirror and did what I thought was a smart thing. I grabbed my toothbrush and used the handle to pry my lip, tongue, and thumb away from my front tooth. Did you know that super glue leaves a white, rough residue in your mouth that no amount of scrubbing can remove? No? Me either. So I had unglued everything that had been stuck together in my mouth, but now I looked like I had a blooming case of thrush in my mouth.

I was hesitant to mention why I didn't feel too hungry at dinner time, but my family finally got the reason out of me, and that was an ugly scene also! If I had known that my family would get such a kick out of me gluing my mouth almost shut, shoot, I would've done it long ago. Now that was over two weeks ago, and I've got to tell you, super glue has staying power! Every now and then when I burp, I can still taste that stuff...so much for do it yourself dentists!

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