Okay, so I have a #dentist appointment today. Something I always do literally right before going to the dentist is brush my teeth and floss. One last brush through before I go.
🆕 blog! “The tooth, the whole tooth, and nothing but the tooth”
You know that ice-breaker game "Two Truths And A Lie"? When I'm forced into some mandatory office fun, I always say... I've sat in the seat of a space shuttle. I still have two of my baby teeth. I used to be a voice-over artist. Well, one of those truths is about to come crashing […]
Do electric toothbrushes usually go bad pretty fast? My old electric toothbrush I found in my downstairs bathroom was already dead. This week my fancy Smart rechargeable one died (turns on but the motor stops), only 3? years old.
I guess the AA battery ones are cheap enough to replace, but the Bluetooth one with the app is NOT
Several years ago, I had a CT scan of my jaw. The dentist wasn't sure if she was allowed to give me a copy of the scan, which led me to ask "who owns the copyright to my medical images?" I still don't have an answer to the copyright question - but I do now […]
When I was a kid, I had two of my adult teeth surgically removed. As such, I still have two of my baby teeth. And, as I get older, they're starting to wear down.
At every dental check-up my dentist prods them, gives them a wiggle, and sometimes takes an x-ray. "Well," they say, "They're fine for now…"
For decades, I've experienced pain in my teeth after warming up inside after being out in the cold for a while (e.g., 30 minute walk). (The "cold" doesn't even have to be very cold: low 50s F can do it to me.) The pain can be pretty severe, and last for hours. I've mentioned it to numerous dentists, but none have had anything helpful to say. Today, I finally found a paper describing the phenomenon. It's nice to know people know it's a thing, at least. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5736355/#teeth#pain#dentistry
I had a dental bridge fitted yesterday. All this morning my tongue has been trying to oust the "foreign body" occupying the gap that for decades has been a place to hide beans, peas, toffee and other tooth-sized blobs. Now my cheek has joined in with an "Oi, what's this??"
Not going to get any work done with these distractions.
... competing with wing loss in flies (flightlessness), at 25 events counted to date. Can't find an up to date citation; a neat phylogenetic tree of #Diptera marking all the apomorphic events was shown to me by Darren Williams. There's Wagner & Liebherr 1992 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/016953479290047F listing 22 insect orders with flightless species: almost all of them have species with secondary wing loss.
Worst day ever. I had double jaw surgery 7 years ago and I was told then that there was a chance that the trauma from the surgery could kill some of my teeth. Last weekend the unthinkable happened and I got a tooth infection out of nowhere. 2 days after my last dental cleaning actually. Long story short 2 of my teeth died and 4 more are about to. Now I need 6 dental implants. I’ve already got 33 screws and a few brackets in my face. What’s 6 more screws? 😓 I’m devastated. #mastodon#teeth#dentalimplants
You know that ice-breaker game "Two Truths And A Lie"? When I'm forced into some mandatory office fun, I always say...
I've sat in the seat of a space shuttle.
I still have two of my baby teeth.
I used to be a voice-over artist.
Well, one of those truths is about to come crashing down.
When I was younger, I had two of my adult teeth removed. They were coming out at such a crazy angle that they couldn't be tackled with braces. So they were surgically yanked out. I was a teenager at the time and was told that, with care, my remaining baby gnashers would probably last another decade or so - if I remembered to floss.
Three decades on, and I thought the chompers were doing relatively well. Sure, they looked a little worn and stubby - but they had certainly exceeded their manufacturer's guarantee. My lovely dentist had been prodding at them for the last few years with increasing worry. But reassured me they were doing better than expected.
And then, one morning, one of the teeth suffered a catastrophic structural integrity failure.
Aiii! Luckily it didn't hurt - although it did rip into my lip a bit. But it was clear this tooth needed something more drastic than extra-strength Colgate.
The dentist has whittled down the remaining fang to be a bit less stabby. Now I have to decide what I want to happen to the remainder of my tusks.
I've previously wondered about high-tech dental implants - but it looks like there's nothing available. No NFC, light up, Internet-of-Teeth for me!
So I guess I'm going under the gas once again. These old ivories are destined for the scrap-heap. Titanium implants with glow in the dark colour-matched crowns, I guess. I'm not sure I want to travel abroad to get the procedure done. It may be cheaper, but there's less recompense if things go wrong.
If you've have dental implants in the UK, and want to hit me up with strategic info, please use the comment box.
Several years ago, I had a CT scan of my jaw. The dentist wasn't sure if she was allowed to give me a copy of the scan, which led me to ask "who owns the copyright to my medical images?" I still don't have an answer to the copyright question - but I do now have a copy of a CT scan!
Last week - following some dental trauma - I had another scan of my head. The dentist took great delight in showing me my bones in 3D. So I asked for a copy.
This was something he'd never done before! So, together, we navigated the software, found the export button, and generated a copy. Even zipped up it was half a gigabyte - a bit too much for email and, not unreasonably, he didn't want me plugging in strange USB devices to his medical equipment. So he sent it over WeTransfer. Possibly not the most secure method for my medical data, but I didn't really have time to set up a personal SFTP site or teach him about installing WSL so he could SCP the content. Ah well, needs must.
Unzipped, the folder was about 700MB. Of that, 400MB was taken up by the included Windows app "Ez3D-i". Unsurprisingly, it didn't run on Linux.
The other 300MB was taken up by 450 .DCM files. These are medical images in the DICOM format. This is a relatively open standard which uses JPG plus lots of metadata. There are dozens of Linux programs which can read this - although many haven't been updated in years.
The easiest GUI for viewing the images is Mango. It presents a view of the CT Scan that you can move around.
But once you get the hang of it, you can manipulate the 3D scan and view it from all angles. It's possible to peel away the soft tissue and do all sorts of other fancy trickery. Even on my laptop without a fancy graphics card, it was fast. Here's a quick animation showing the (false colour) version.
If you have had a CT scan, please do ask for a copy of the DICOM files. It is great fun to explore around your own body.
Now I just need to find a way to import this into my Meta Quest so I can enjoy these teeth in VR!
nah dog I'm toothmaxxing, polish the pearlies 40 times a day, if you not brushin you not crushin, stay toothy mouthnation #toothgod#lifeadvice#finance#fyp#teeth