Birthday drabble

...for duco_lacuna , new to the flist and fellow Lucius lover. Happy birthday, my dear!

The entry in the English-German dictionary my fingertip landed on was "hair's breadth".
Hence, I give you 178 words of Lumione
Rating: PG

 

( Hair's Breadth )

My heart is bleeding...

... for those poor bilionaires: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090312/tuk-doom-and-gloom-for-uk-billionaires-6323e80.html
Is this really the right message in times like this? When people lose their jobs and don't know how to pay for medical treatment and lose their homes because they can't pay their mortgages anymore, will they be comforted by the thought that billionaires have been reduced to mere common, or garden, millionaires?

In other, much gloomier news, I have a dentist appointment at 11.
After 13 dentist-free years, fate has finally caught up with me.
13 years ago, I had a root canal done -- the back half of the tooth was removed too -- and then thought Bugger it, I'll just leave it like this. Since the front half was there, nothing was visible. And in spite of dire warnings, there was neither infection nor inflammation, nor did my lower jaw fall off..
Last Saturday, I baked bread, ate a slice, and a piece of crust went between the tooth-ruin and its neighbour, acting like a wedge when I bit down. Result: tooth broke clean off. Unfortunately, unless it's replaced, its colleague in the upper jaw might come loose, and we can't have that. Hence the dentist.
If he intends to take out the root, though, and make an implant, I won't have it done here. I'm just too paranoid about the risk of infection anywhere in my head. But I guess the root holds firm, so he can probably insert a titanium base and put a crown on in.
Anyway, I'm going to have my teeth done completely (not that there will be much, but anyway), and then I'll be looking forward to another 13 years without crossing a dentist's threshold.

Short update on dentistry

Bugger.

OK, first the good news: in my 13 dentist-free years, assiduous flossing, cleaning etc. has led to the extraordinary result of: one small spot of contact caries and nothing else.
On the minus side: the broken tooth up left will need a root canal and crown, to be started next Tuesday. Aaaand... the broken tooth bottom right...will... need *aaargh* next Thursday, surgery to take out the root and put in an implant.
If I'm very lucky (well, a slightly bizarre kind of lucky) it will be possible to put the crown on the implant before I leave. If it's too early, the crown will have to be put on in Vienna or more probably Macedonia.

The dentist is a really nice guy who even speaks German. (Why does that failt to cheer me up?)