Bill Kirby: A dental detective counts down the solution

"Humility never killed anyone."

– Peggy Noonan

Teeth have numbers.

I know most of you know this.

I knew this, too, but I just don't know how to count them.

You can go on the computer and call up a "tooth chart" with the numbers beside them. (They aren't actually on the tooth.) But it's not always that simple. At least for me.

Seven decades of wisdom teeth extractions, crowns, rural life without Fluoride water and a misjudged baseball when I was 20, have taken their toll.

When it comes to my mouth, I don't know where to start counting.

Over the years I have heard my multiple crownsmiths making small talk with an associate with such insights as, "No. 13's gonna be a problem today." Or, "No. 31 should really come out. He needs the space."

I just keep looking into the glare of the overhead light and hope my jaw grows so numb I can't feel it until tomorrow.

Besides, I now know I don't have to count them; my insurance company does that.

Last week I got a bill from the dentist office saying the insurance company had rejected payment for my most recent filling on "No. 28."

Usually, fillings are not that big a problem, but I passed this news along to my wife, who saddled up her high horse to figure it out.

"I'll check your dental records," she said crisply.

I was quiet for a moment, then asked, "You have my dental records?"

She gave me a "one day, the coroner might ask" shrug and went to her laptop.

Fifteen minutes later she returned to the den waiving a piece of paper and reported, "According to the insurance company's dental payment statement, No. 28 was extracted in July 2020 by a different dentist." My insurer did not want to pay for repairing a tooth now gone.

Nancy Drew had solved the mystery.

"Well, a few weeks ago they put a filling in one of my teeth," I said, "so I'm guessing someone counted wrong."

"You're probably guessing right," my in-house medical examiner said. "You need to get one of your many dentists to figure out the right tooth number ... say No. 27."

That I will because money is involved.

That I will because life continues to provide surprises.

The government might not be able to catch every fully-grown drug dealer slipping across the Rio Grande, but my insurance company knows the number of every tooth still in my head.

Bill Kirby has reported, photographed and commented on life in Augusta and Georgia for 45 years.

This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Bill Kirby: Count on it: it's a numbers game at the dentist's office