Ti Kee - literal translation is 'iron tooth', a Hokkien expression for being obstinate.
Nice?Finally have the courage to fix my perennial problem of fillings dropping off from my badly decayed tooth, and having to endure the pain and fear of visiting the dentist time after time to replace the filling.
I have 4 such VERY badly decayed tooth with very large fillings. However tempted I am to replace all of them with these shiny new ones, there are mainly 2 reasons why I didn't:
1. Cost. $450 per tooth.
2. PAIN.
What they do is, with local anaesthesia, they will ground the teeth until all the hard, outer enamel is gone, leaving the soft, EXTREMELY sensitive dentine. It wasn't painful during the process but I can actually smell the smell of burning metal of the dentist drill. They will then fix a temporary crown which is pretty useless against cold or hot food (and an hour long throbbing sensation will ensue after lunch, dinner..). Meanwhile the crown will be made and one week later (today) they will remove the temp crown and fix the real metallic one. Sound simple? Yes. Painless?
Fucking NO! Once the temp crown is removed, the dentine is exposed. But to cement the crown on, the dentist have to blow air and make sure the surface is dry. He blew for like 15 seconds, and during this 15 seconds I was twitching in the dentist chair and tears involuntarily well up in my eyes! No joke! Then he put the crown on and I have to bite it, which does nothing to relieve the pain. And after the cement had set, the pain still linger for a good 4-5 hours!
But it should last forever. I hope he is right!
Wonder if I will have a problem going through x-ray security devices at airports?
