Teething Troubles

I have a problem controlling my mouth.

‘Keeping it shut’ and ‘Feeding it too much’ are the most common mouth problems I know and, although I’m occasionally afflicted by these, my current problem is simply pain: my teeth hurt.

It feels like someone has put an orthodontic brace around my front upper teeth and tightened it.  After about a month back and forth between the doctor and the  dentist – an x ray revealed what looked suspiciously like a baby tooth nestling in between the roots of my front teeth.  It was an ‘Aha’ moment!

Good: now we have a reason for the pain, so off I go to the dental surgeon… eventually.

(Time passes… painkillers popped… Dum – di – dum).

Six weeks later (and three days after someone had prayed for this ‘baby tooth’ to disappear) I finally get to see the surgeon. He agrees that the original x ray does indeed appear to reveal a baby tooth ‘unusual at your age but not unheard of’ (NO KIDDING! I’m almost at my half century, teething wasn’t on the agenda for this decade of my life) ‘but we’d better get a more detailed X ray done’.

Second x ray comes back: no tooth! Me and ‘Dental Surgeon’ peer hard into his computer screen….. Nothing! (Well nothing unusual anyway).

Since then 5 more x rays have confirmed that there is nothing in my mouth that shouldn’t be there. So how does he explain it? The words ‘anomaly’ and ‘artefact’ came into  what was a fairly confused ramble, basically he thinks it was smudge on the first x ray.

I don’t know and I wouldn’t care either if it weren’t for the fact that  the ‘smudge on my x ray’ still hurts! If only the pain had disappeared at the same time as the ‘phantom tooth’. Sadly it hasn’t.

So what’s going on? I haven’t a clue… I’m open to theories/suggestions… any ideas anyone?

Anything that might improve on the dental surgeon’s suggestion of ‘opening my gum with a scalpel and having a poke around to see if he can see anything’ (Okay that’s not quite what he said but I think that’s the general meaning of ‘exploratory operation’).

Just for the record: I don’t think it’s teeth grinding – surely both sets of molars would hurt if I did that, not just the upstairs front ones? Is it neuralgia? I don’t know… what is neuralgia anyway?  I’ve ruled out hormones (had ’em checked, you never know).  My current ‘hot suspect’ is the new pair of glasses I had about 3 weeks before the pain began – but I only wear them for an hour a day and I promise you I don’t chew on them so this seems a little far-fetched.

Anyway, excuse a  moaning rant, not my normal blog output… but if anyone has any ideas?