No Pain No Vain

In my never ending quest to carefully not take myself too seriously, I will now share with you perhaps the most vain thing Lia and I have ever done.

We are bleaching our teeth. 

Nice Mold!

Lia's gotten tired of coming up with answers when her patients ask her, "Why do you have a golden tooth?" The truth is the tooth next to the "golden" one was knocked out a long time ago and was replaced by a pearly white prosthetic, making her real tooth golden by proximation. So I can understand. She's got a good excuse. It almost counts as a medical one. Almost. 

Me. I'm just vain. I told myself this morning that if I had whiter teeth that maybe I would smile more and make other people smile more and therefore make the world a better place - which, quite frankly is something I strongly believe in. However, giving myself white teeth to bring about world peace is, I admit, a reach. 

One Week In!

So good and bad excuses out of the way...it was time to get down to business. 

Now here is where the rubber meets the road: we were told (this may have been a joke) that teeth bleaching works best if you do not partake in teeth darkening products, i.e. wine and coffee while bleaching. 

Oh boy. 

I can just drink beer but no coffee? NO COFFEE? This is the reason Lia and I talked about but put off bleaching the last six months. It's also the reason Lia pushed our start date from April to May. 

But if she was going to escape the torment of coming up with golden teeth excuses, it was going to have to happen some day.

So we began two days after I returned from Seattle. One last great cup of joe from The Station in Beacon Hill! 

The first day was not so bad. 

The second day was a different story. I felt like crap. It's the only word for it. Actually, I can think of other words, but I'll just say crap and keep my blog PG. It was awful. The worst headache in the history of headaches. 10.0 on the Richter Scale. It started down my neck and crawled up over my head and took hold of my ears and slammed them together like cymbals. The problem was my brain was in the way. 

That was 9am. By 9:30am I had stopped trying to work and started perusing websites about caffeine withdrawal.  

ScienceDaily (May 1, 2009) — Ever miss your daily cup of coffee and subsequently get a pounding headache? According to reports from consumers of coffee and other caffeinated products, caffeine withdrawal is often characterized by a headache, fatigue, feeling less alert, less energetic and experiencing difficulty concentrating.

Interesting article actually. Here is the link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090501162805.htm

Let's see...headache (yes), fatigue (yes), feeling less alert (huh?), less energetic (yes) and experiencing difficulty concentrating (what was that? oh, yes). 

I was dying. That was precisely what it felt like. 

So I took a nap from 10 to 11:30 and woke up feeling worse... 

...Each day has gotten better praise Jesus. And it's hard to say for sure but I think my teeth have changed from dark yellow to bright yellow! 

Lia and I (or maybe just me) will post before and after pictures soon.  Be sure to check back!