THE AMALGAM CONTROVERSY

Me : Sakit gigi :(
Mad Hippo: Udah ke dokter gigi? Barangkali mau tumbuh taring lagi.

I am afraid to go to the dentist (for obvious reasons), but subconsciously I am always worried that missing one dentist appointment may lead to my wearing dentures at the age of 40. You see, I develop tooth-decay very easily. Okay so I do eat chocolates almost everyday but I am also obsessed about keeping my teeth clean. When I was 15 I had the world’s worst toothache and ever since then, I took care of my teeth like you wouldn’t believe. Not only I brushed my teeth excessively (until I found out recently that you could actually do more harm than good doing so), I visited the dentist so religiously, telling myself as the drill started whirling that I would do anything to keep myself from wearing full dentures at 40.

Then from 1998 to 2000 I was quite busy and forgot about visiting the dentist’s office. And from 2001 until 2003, I visited the dentist almost every month, because not only several new decays had formed by then, but the older fillings needed to be replaced too.

I had no idea, that the dentist I visited for those 2 years had planted quite a large amount of mercury, the cancer-causing metal, inside my mouth.

It started yesterday when I felt sort of funny around my upper right jaw. Being obsessed of my teeth, I quickly thought I had developed another new decay. My first reaction was to send a text-message to Mad Hippo. My second reaction was to haul my ass as fast as I could to my new dentist, not the dentist I saw in 2001-2003 because she had moved out of town. It turned out that my teeth were okay, apart from this new small decay which was on a molar in my upper left jaw, not my right one. But the dentist made one remark that still echoed inside my head till today:
”Oh my God. You have so many fillings. And almost all them are amalgam fillings. Why didn’t your former dentists ever tell you that amalgam fillings contain mercury, and that 40 years after they are put inside your teeth, they may cause a cancer?”

He proceeded to explain that yes, amalgam fillings didn’t cause cancer to all people, just to some of the people, but it was still considered harmful. And I know for a fact that before my dad started his chemotherapy, he was advised to have his amalgam fillings removed. My dentist recommended that I have all of my amalgam fillings replaced with another substance, but the problem is, I have so many of them! How many years, and how much money do I have to spend to replace all of them? Why didn’t my former dentist tell me about this back in 2001, so that I didn’t have to waste so much money on something that is considered carcinogenic? (How could I be so stupid anyway? I guess even before 2001, I had heard there was a controversy about the use of amalgam dental fillings, but why didn’t I ask the dentist about it? How could I be so ignorant?)

Last night I texted a former classmate of mine, a dentist who is now working towards his PhD. ”Is amalgam really that harmful,” was what I basically asked him, ”because my mouth is so full of them.”
This morning his reply came: ”Amalgam is considered harmful because it contains mercury, and once mercury enters your blood stream, it may obstruct your blood from carrying sufficient oxygen. There is still a controversy about it though. Some people say the mercury ions inside a dental filling don’t bind with anything; therefore they can’t enter your body’s tissues. But frankly speaking, I have never used amalgam since four years ago.”

I wanted to hunt down my former dentist and shove a pack of amalgam fillings down her throat. The least she could do was to tell me about this controversy, and left the decision to me. But no, as I remember vividly, she made a point of saying over and over again that amalgam was safe. That she did a perfect job with the fillings and they would last me a lifetime. That the fillings were so perfectly done so that I wasn’t supposed to have them replaced with “that new white substance because you’re embarrassed with the black fillings I gave you.”

OH MY GOD.

I just searched Wikipedia about this controversy and am left shocked to my very core. It says that in US, the use of amalgam fillings will be illegal in 2007. You can also read another article about it here. Meanwhile I am gonna cry. Yes I really think I am gonna cry.