Last night found me leaving the house at 11PM to visit the nearby pharmacy.
To obtain floss.
Here's the story.
Like a good
It was not pleasant, and the more that I tried to re-floss to get the threads out, the more threads got stuck.
Other measures were required, and my first attempted solution met with failure. No, the Water Pik was not able to blast the tightly stuck floss loose.
Next, I tried to pull the floss out with Sue's tweezers (bottom) — to no avail.
I was preparing to live with the inconvenience during the night and to look for a different brand of floss in the morning when I realized the pharmacy was still open.
Out I went ... and returned with two purchases — Oral-B Superfloss and G.U.M. floss (see photo, back middle). Superfloss is the kind that you stick and pull thru the teeth from the side above the gum line when you can't get the usual floss to go down between your teeth. It helped to remove some of the threads but not enough.
So, I tried the G.U.M brand, which I purchased thinking that it might be tough enough to get thru my teeth without shredding and thus compounding the problem. I extracted only a few inches of floss before the thing jammed up and would yield no more. The little that I did get out seemed to do some good, but I still had some floss stuck in my teeth. No amount of prying and cajoling yielded me any more floss.
I was getting quite hot and bothered by this time.
After almost giving up in despair, I remembered that I had a small container of another brand of floss in my travel bag. This was courtesy of my dentist, who kindly gifts me with floss and a toothbrush after a visit when I have re-mortgaged my house to pay for his latest luxury vacation.
I extracted a little, used it, and moved some more threads from the offending teeth. But I needed to give it another go to remove the final but obstinate miscreants.
Lo and behold! Hadn't all of the floss rewound back into the container?!
Fortunately, I was able to pry open the container with my handy dandy Swiss Army knife (too bad I had been unable to accomplish this with the G.U.M floss earlier), and extricate some more floss.
After about two more passes, my teeth were clear of the damnable floss threads although I confess that my gums were bleeding a bit after all of this attention.
I am so grateful for incidents such as this for giving me something to blog about other than my charming grandchildren whom I'm sure the work has come to hate after all of these years of countless pictures and my concomitant doting .
Into each life.... and you stood up to the crises, meeting head on and prevailed. Inspiring story indeed. I also had to either chuckle and cry at the cause of you having to consider remortgaging your house. My dentist also also provides free floss and toothbrushes. Im reminded of that frequently in the summer when I pull into the parking lot and see his very expensive yellow Italian convertible but never on Friday as the office is closed. That's his golf day....
ReplyDeleteSee, floss is dangerous! I knew it!!
ReplyDeleteAC, it's the little things in life that can truly be the most irritating, including stuck dental floss. And, who among us has not had a similar problem...only not to post about it. Now, I will know which products to try or not. And, you can keep those grandkids posts coming anytime.
ReplyDeleteI'll read whatever you write about the little charmers. Because it's so much fun.
ReplyDeleteDental floss (and anything else) shreds in my teeth daily. I use those plastic pic thingies to extract it.
Oh poor you. I know the feeling of having something as thin as dental floss stuck between teeth. It feels as if a large wooden wedge is forcing your teeth apart. I'm glad you were able to get it out finally. But essentially one brand of dental floss was problematic and two others had faulty dispensers. That doesn't bode well for the quality of the product.
ReplyDeleteI think you should just have gone directly to the Swiss Army knife. Great post though.
ReplyDeleteI think you should have just gone with the Swiss Army knife. Or instead of hitting the pharmacy, a couple of extra-hot coffees at the also-open Timmy's might have done the trick.
ReplyDeleteGreat post.