In Love with France, At Home In Italy

"Why are those front teeth of yours so dark?" asks my observant mom who, even at nearly 89, sees and hears better than I do. My answer:"Because they're my own." When I repeated that to the cocky American periodontist, he said, "Don't flatter yourself. Those teeth have had so many fillings that there's not really much of you left in there." Hmm.. Food for thought...Especially for someone who grew up in an age when fluoride was considered a communist plot, and who had spent a good part of her life in the dentist's chair. Yet I've found dentistry in Italy to be a thing unto itself--and a much less expensive thing, at that. Even little Orvieto has a superior dentist who comes twice a week from Rome to work his magic on tough cases like mine. And unlike in the States, where most of my issues require a trifecta of separate experts (dentist, endodontist, periodontist), Marco knows how to do it all. My husband ...

Planting season is here. Birds chirp. Sun beams. Can there ever be a day too radiant for an implant? After my first dental implant, I said "never again," but here I am at number three. Despite my maniacal 12-step, multi-tooled plaque-attack that requires at least a half hour per day of my life, I am back in dental doodoo. Apparently there is no cure for the double whammy of having the gods of dentistry failing to smile you, and no access to fluoridated water. My mom tried her best to convince the town that fluoridated water was NOT a communist plot, but since this was the 50s, she was lucky not to have been ridden out of town on the rails. (full disclosure:at a wrinkle-free 87, she is a veteran of 9 implants and has the best smile in the family) In my neck of the woods in America, an implant will set you back $2250, and there's no tooth to go along with it. That would cost you another two thousand, none of it covered by insurance. I had been strongly...