With Vogon along for moral support, I saw the dentist yesterday. I don't like the calling and getting there parts of the task, but once I'm actually in the dentist's office I'm good.

The dentist agreed that crowns would not be a good investment for my teeth (the one crown I did have came out last year), so our new plan is to extract the crumbling mess in my mouth, then get a few implants to keep the bone height up and fit me for dentures.

Since my broken tooth doesn't hurt and the immediate goal was to reduce my oral pain, we decided to pull my upper left lateral incisor then. It was quick and relatively painless -- I took one Vicodin tablet as the Novocaine wore off, then went 8 hours until the next one. I slept pretty well last night without taking another, then took half a tablet this morning and put the rest up. I was feeling hung over and vaguely nauseous, which I took as a sign to back off the painkillers. If I'd been more awake when I split that tablet this morning, I would have left the tablet and taken a couple of naproxen instead.

I'm going to take it easy today and see how I feel tomorrow. Fender-cat's been making sure I get plenty of rest and we have a healthy stash of soups and broth until I'm feeling up to chewing food.