Of Stress and Gratitude

If something had to break, better my night mouthguard than a coronary artery. This is what's left of my tension-surpressing night guard that is supposed to keep me from clenching my teeth during sleep. It's a tiny thing, custom-made by my dentist, that clicks on over my front bottom teeth. As you can see in the photo, the device is not much wider than a couple of Franklin D. Roosevelt heads, but it does a mighty job. It has been holding back the over 250 lbs. of pressure a human bite can exert.

I got it less than a year out following my One and Only SCAD when my dentist suggested perhaps I was tense. Well...she didn't exactly suggest that I was tense. She outright told me: "You've been through hell-and-back with your heart. Of course you're tense!

I had come in to see her with tooth pain that turned out to be a diagonal pressure crack from the surface of the tooth to the gum line. The film of my molar, enlarged on her screen, looked like the aftermath of an earthquake, like an image from my undergrad geology textbook. All that pressure had opened up a pathway for bacteria to make its way into the roots and I ended up with four root canals, a complete crown, and this small clear device that I was to wear every night to prevent anything else from cracking in my mouth. 

It looks pitiful now broken in two. This wasn't supposed to happen. 
It's fabricated out of a forever substance that the manufacturer's website only refers to as a "Discluding Element." Somehow my jaw clenching had decimated a substance that can dangle whole elephants from steel building girders and act as a crash barrier between locomotives. 

Now what? The Thanksgiving holiday is about to dawn and I am days away from my dentist's office being open. Can I actually try to sleep over the next few night without clenching? That is harder than it sounds. 

My dentist has explained the clenching behavior and the hell-and-back to me a few times now and in a few different ways. My favorite analogy she uses is that people who clench their teeth at night usually know how to keep themselves calm and are high-functioning during the day. It's as if they put the stress and worries that come up in their minds away in a file cabinet during the day to deal with later and go on with their jobs or responsibilities at hand. But guess when they start rummaging through those filing cabinets? In my case, I think I am probably a researcher pulling an all-nighter.

Sound familiar?  How many of us SCAD survivors are also high-functioning filers by day and teeth-clenchers by night?

Maybe the only solution is to reverse it, at least until I get a new night mouthguard. 

At the dinner table this Thanksgiving I shall say: "I am grateful to express my stress and worries during the day, rather than all night long."

There!

Look out, family.