Mandible Computer Tomography

Posted on January 22, 2004 in Dentition

I have an unusually shaped jaw. Where a normal bite comes out like the blade of a round-tipped shovel, mine resembles a sine wave. The molars flare out on either side. It doesn’t cause me nearly as much pain as it does my dentists. The periodontist who will emplace a titanium screw in my mandible felt around with his rubber glove and detected an undercut — like the hollows along the base of the sandstone walls that tower over the Virgin River Narrows.

“It seems that it will be all right, but it might help if you went in for a CT scan,” he said. “Before the surgery.” We both laughed.

So today, I drove to Newport Beach to have it done. The wait took longer than the procedure. A short tech who wore a loose Hawaiian shirt escorted me into the room where they kept the magic donut. “This should only take about five minutes,” she said, indicating that I should lay down on the towel-covered the blue plastic pad. I lay down with my shoulders on a folded towel pad and my head declining towards the machine at at 10 to 20 degree angle. The dust and pollen induced phlegm swished down to the sinuses above and behind my eyes and pooled.

She raised the table and rolled me into position, past a pair of red lasers. I reclined in the slightly uncomfortable position for a couple of minutes while she programmed the computer behind a screen. A glass circle surrounded me inside the heavy steel frame. I looked into a maze of circuitry and a muffin cooling fan. About eight inches beyond the top of my head, an orange light blinked. Then the donut began to hum. A three inch long car made quick circuits of the track. This, I presume, was what scattered the x-rays. The table moved a few inches so that the scanner could invisibly and painlessly slice me up like a loaf of bread.

When it was all over, I asked to see the films. They wouldn’t be ready for two days, she said. The computer needed time to assess what was bone and what was soft tissue. “We’ll send them to your caregiver.”

I left, a little disappointed that I didn’t get to see how my crooked jaw fastened to the rest of my head. I took a piece of candy from the receptionist and walked out to the truck, recording what I could of the brief experience. Then I drove home. The quicksilver sea glinted in my rear view mirror as I left Newport Beach. What if they scanned that, I wondered. What would they see?

Somewhere in the sand there may have lain a jawbone of some sea creature, waiting for a Ted Hughes to find it and praise it. Mine would only go to a dentist who, in three weeks, would cut and drill a space for a titanium screw. His drill would do all the singing.