Hello Steemit. Below is part 2 of my 3 part story. I hope the reader finds this story as entertaining as it was to write down. Now that the events are passed, its nice to be able to laugh about them. However, I can assure, these events are true, and to the best of my recollection, this is exactly what happened.

If you haven't read part 1, here it is:

Part 1 of 3

10,000 Dollar Smile

The Chronicles of My Face, From the Nose Down

Part 2 of 3

Chapter 2 – “Soft” Ball

The bowling incident had led to a few dental procedures that resulted in two veneers on my front two teeth. The tooth that had fallen out was put back in place; however, Dr. Ryder gave it about a coin flip for whether or not it would “take.” Basically, when a tooth falls out of your mouth, its impossible to tell whether or not your body will re-accept the root and tooth as normal, or begin to treat it like a foreign body.

With my luck, its no surprise that I experienced the latter, but we’ll come back to that later, as that is much closer to end of my story, than this particular segment, there’s quite a bit to tell of the in-between.

In order for Dr. Ryder to place the veneers on my sad excuses for front teeth, the injury had to first heal. This was done using a sort of dental band aid that looked a little more like plaster and a little less like teeth. Basically, my teeth were glued together in the front and this “cast” was left on for about 4 weeks while the teeth gave their best effort at healing correctly.

It was a glorious day after I had this dental cast removed. Finally, after the sordid event involving the bowling bowl and a variety of different explanations I had given to answer peoples relentless questions (trust me, this is the true one) about the event, I was finally given my permanent crown veneers and sent on along my merry way. Dr. Ryder’s parting words rang in my head as I exited the office,

“When you do start work, make sure they have dental (insurance)… Definitely make sure you get good dental.”

It has only been about a month or so after I had been repaired and brought back into full service, so to speak, post bowling ball incident. I smiled for more than one reason at this point. One, I was just happy not to worry about my teeth falling out, and two, veneers are expensive and I wanted to get my money’s worth.

Spring-time is gorgeous in Austin, Texas. The weather is cool enough to spend all day outside, there’s plenty of sunshine, sports, and sun-dresses walking around the University of Texas campus to keep any college guy nothing less than jovial. I’ve included an image that helps the reader understand a bit more of my meaning. On one of these beautiful spring days, I was asked to play intramural softball with some of my fraternity brothers and a few other close friends.

Springtime in Austin

I was no expert on the softball field, but I had played sports my entire life and considered myself athletic enough to hop on a softball field and do just fine. I arrived at the field with Bryce who had picked me up with a grin. He always seemed to be smiling about a joke he heard that he refused to share with the rest of us. He was a baseball veteran and as we blared Baby Boy da Prince “The Way I Live” on the way to the intramural fields, Bryce assured me that he would be “dominating short stop.” I wasn’t as confident although you wouldn’t have known as I proceeded to hop into the conversation asking if Bryce wanted to see the videos from when I played AAA ball. We threw the ball around, warmed up and of course a softball game wouldn’t be a softball game without a few beers to keep us hydrated. Being the college guys we were, that almost always consisted of Natural Light.

The day was waning and by the time our game time came around the sun was past its prime. Nevertheless, there was still plenty of daylight left and we proceeded to take the field. I ended up in right field and in spite of a few nerves, was excited to play some semi-competitive sports as it’s a bit more difficult to organize than it had seemed to be in high school.

First pitch. That was all it took. One pitch. The metal bat cracked as it made contact with the “Soft” ball and a pop fly soared above me to the middle of right field. I didn’t hesitate or think twice. There was a little sun in the eyes, but in spite of what I tell people, it probably shouldn’t have made a difference. I ran under the ball and raised my glove to catch the out, or so I thought.

The ball plummeted in slow motion, which in hindsight should have made it easier to catch. Wrong. I must have misjudged by a few inches, because instead of falling into the pocket of my glove, the not-so-softball connected with the outer portion of the glove, probably right above my ring finger. This was inconvenient to say the least, as instead of changing direction, the glove politely moved out of the way and the ball continued its original trajectory towards my pearly whites.

The ball connected with my teeth through the bottom part of my lip and fell to the ground. In this split second that felt like an eternity, I was both angry and embarrassed. I missed the out, I dropped the ball, and I figured I must have had a fat lip. I threw the ball into 2nd and trudged back to my spot at right field, feeling a little sheepish to say the least.

As I stood there feeling not so on top of the world, I felt a little something trickle down my chin. I moved to wipe the sweat off my face and was a little confused trying to determine why I was sweating a crimson red color. From my previous experience this only happened to professional athletes, conveniently while they were shooting advertisements for Gatorade.

Of course, it wasn’t sweat, or Gatorade. I looked down and saw the white letters on my t-shirt spattered with a remarkable amount of this red dye which turned out to be my blood. As I moved my tongue around my mouth, I also realized that my little incident with the softball a moment ago had some adverse effects that I hadn’t anticipated.

Two of my lower teeth had snapped backwards into my mouth and were connected by a very flimsy amount of something, which for brevity’s sake, I will call enamel. Apparently, before or during the impact, the part of my lip that was up against these teeth had pushed with enough force to bust a hole connecting the inside and outside of my mouth. Realizing this, and judging from the level of pain that came with bouncing my teeth around with my tongue, I thought maybe I should say something before the next batter took a shot at the other side of my face.

“Uhhhh – Guys!” I shouted in towards the infield. “I think I need a sub…” The 2nd basemen, Erik, turned around and looked at me. He burst out laughing – “Hah! What the hell? Ha ha ha, Hey Ump! Can I get a T-O?”

I don’t want people to think Eric was being callous. It was funny, and I honestly had a smile on my own face if only for the irony. After my recent bout with the bowling ball, I couldn’t muster much more of a response than “well, it figures.” Even with the attempt at fighting in a much lower weight class, my bout with the softball resulted similarly to my bout with the bowling ball.

I sat and watched the rest of the inning, meanwhile the UT Intramural Sports personnel were trying to clean the blood off the grass where I had previously been standing. This was absurd to me, but was some policy that had been introduced for safety’s sake and honestly was entertaining to watch as it seemed clear to me that there was no way to complete this task with any sort of closure.

Bryce came off the field shortly after and after a few words and much more laughter (less from me this time and more from Bryce, Eric, and the crew, Bryce kindly offered to take me to the hospital. We went back to the clinic that I had visited that fateful evening of the 1st (or morning of the 2nd) and although it was only around 5 pm, there was obviously still a wait. Let’s face it, its an emergency room; they don’t take reservations, or probably more relevant to me, have something to the equivalent of frequent flyer miles or rewards points. Hell, I was contemplating printing up a Buy 9 visits get the 10th visit free card, or trying to finagle an “If you are greeted by first name when you arrive, your wait won’t be more than 10 minutes” policy. This visit had no such luck, and as the ER seemed pretty full, Bryce and I settled in for the long haul. Fortunately, Bryce had recently become addicted to “Brick Breaker” on his Blackberry, and this was his perfect opportunity to set a high score.

I looked down after a while and noticed Bryce was on level 1000 or something to the equivalent. His concentration mirrored that of a surgeon closing up an open heart patient. I was sitting there watching idly when the nurse finally called my name. Bryce, his blackberry, and I waltzed down the hall into one of the patient rooms. “The doctor will be in shortly” the nurse relayed. I hopped up into my normal spot like a bar regular returning to his favorite stool after a long days work. There I was, sitting alert on the hospital bed, letting my mind wander, thinking a little about how curious hospital bed paper is that it can somehow crinkle noisily regardless of how motionless you are, when the Doctor enters.

The doctor was nice enough and he sat and listened while I went over the story of what happened. After the explanation, the doctor checked out my teeth and went to get his trusty “dental kit” that E-R doctors are so good with and some sutures for the hole in my lip. Obviously this wasn’t my first time to experience the “dental kit” and I knew as well as the doctor did that it basically consisted of a pink gum like substance that was designed to hold your teeth in place just long enough to get you to a dentist and an applicator stick. My best interpretation of it, would be like giving a chef an E-Z bake oven. Regardless of how good the chef is, its still not going to make anything but crap brownies or burnt Bundt cake.

And so the doctor sutured up my lip, which was relatively painless, especially after he gave me the shots that made my face feel like jelly. Then after flipping my teeth back and forth a couple of times, it was time for the dental kit. Normally, I wouldn’t mind too much, and in the end he did a fine job, but as he was working around in my mouth, the only thing that the doctor utters is

“ohh, uh, oops.”

“What was that doc?” I tried to mutter. “Honestly the last thing I ever want to hear a doctor say while he is in the middle of a procedure is – ‘oops’” I stated sarcastically.

Bryce thought this was funny enough to pause his Brick breaker game and roll over laughing. With that, the doctor seemed to see the humor in it and decided to take a break from his little dentistry procedure and have himself a chuckle. So there I was, mouth open, face half jelly, and some sort of pink substance that seemed to be more on my chin and less holding my teeth together and I couldn’t help but crack a half-hearted grin.

“Come on Doc, seriously” I managed to get out. “Just finish this crap so I can go have a drink. Its been a long day.”

The laughter subsided and the doctor finished his work and gave me the number of an oral surgeon in the area. He was also happy to write a prescription for hydrocodone warning that the pain would probably be worse when the numbness wore off and to avoid the sauce if I needed to take the pain killers. Bryce and I were walking out of the hospital and I turned to say some unmemorable closing statement. At that moment, Bryce clears my memory by blurting out

“NOOOOOOO – Damn it!”

I looked at Bryce and it dawned on me that he finally lost at Brickbreaker. I started laughing and as we head home, Bryce proceeds to tell me his new high score. I later find out that this particular high score lasted for a about 3 years until Bryce’s brother had a similar experience and beat the score while waiting for service of his own ailment in an emergency room in north Houston.

Within the next few days I made an appointment to see the oral surgeon, Dr. Voorhees, and when I walked into his office, I got a bit excited (which is atypical for any visit to an oral surgeon.) The surgeon was the spitting image of Larry David, the co-creator of Seinfeld, and hilarious star of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which happened to be one of my favorite shows of the time. He did his initial exam and while he turned around I kept trying to snap a picture with my phone without him noticing. This, I surmised, was ironically the probable behavior that Larry David would have partaken in, should he have been in a similar situation. It did get a little awkward as I kept trying to pretend like I was reading a text message, but the damn phone would make the camera shutter noise every time I tried to take a picture. I laughed it off and said that was the sound it makes when I get a text. I don’t think he believed me and I don’t think he really cared, but he was nice enough about it, and I thought it was hilarious.

Dr. Voorhees told me he had to put a wire bar across my teeth to hold them in place and help them heal. I acknowledged happily and set the appointment on the morning of the 26th of April. With that, I headed home, anxious to show off my pictures of Larry David, the oral surgeon, to my housemates, Jeff and Russell. Below are the comparative pictures for the reader’s viewing pleasure:

Dr. Voorhees

Larry David

My birthday is on the 25th of April. Finding a reason to go out to bars on 6th street wasn’t usually hard for me, and my birthday was no exception. My appointment was at 10 AM and I figured there was plenty of time to shower and clean up prior to my appointment. But it was my birthday. The night was full of free shots, beers, and loud music and as I crashed into my bed near three in the morning, I managed to set my alarm for my 10 AM appointment.

I made the appointment by the hair of my chin, showered and all, but unfortunately, as some of us may be aware, even if you shower, after a birthday night of boozing, once could rinse and repeat a dozen times and you would still reek of alcohol. I trudged into the doctor’s office still feeling wonderful having not gotten to the hangover stage of my day yet, and proceeded to chat up anyone that would talk to me. I managed to tell the doctor that day that he looked just like Larry David and he should watch Curb Your Enthusiasm if he ever had a chance. Pictures to the left and below…

I don’t envy the nurse and doctor as they had to work to put the wire bar across my teeth amidst the cloud of alcoholic fumes seeping from my breath and every other pore in my body. By the end the work got completed. I had the bar on my teeth and some more pain killers for my arsenal. In addition, I had the guidance from my doctor.

“The teeth would probably heal, but there was a good chance I would need a root canal after a year or so.”

Of course that’s what happened. After the bar had finally come off the teeth, I survived for a year or so and eventually went and got my root canals. At this point I had decided I should just wear a money sign into any sort of dentist’s office, because once again, the price of my smile was going up almost as fast as the job market was receding.

I was blessed with financial aid from my parents, and found a job with good dental not too long after that. I had at this point survived two out of three traumatic events (as far as my teeth were concerned). My veneers from the bowling ball incident were holding up all right, and my bottom teeth were repaired (allegedly for their lifetime, but we’ll see). I think it would be fair to say that these were the trials that were to prepare me for my hardest endeavor. This time it wasn’t just a broken tooth or even a tooth falling out. My next experience involved my entire jaw and probably of the three experiences, changed my life more than the other two combined.

Which brings me to Memorial Day weekend, 2009, in Midtown, Houston. And that, is yet to be told in the upcoming and final Part 3 of this little story.

To be continued…