AMY MEISSNER
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An (ongoing) history of teeth.

4/21/2017

9 Comments

 
Amy Meissner, textile artist | From the post An ongoing history of teeth. | www.amymeissner.com/blog/an-ongoing-history-of-teeth

My lovely friend from France, 
Aude Franjou, sent this message to me today:

Dear Amy, I have read again your Instagram post of yesterday, and you looks so sad and lonely at this moment (...) I really hope every thing are for you, yours children and husband all right...no bad news?...no trouble?...

And while I had written an off-hand comment on Instagram about feeling lonely in my studio life, what she really saw -- if there was anything to see in this photo my daughter took -- was me grimacing while I worked, the crinkle in my forehead deepening, because for the last 3 weeks I've been in horrible pain.
​
Amy Meissner, textile artist | From the post An ongoing history of teeth. | www.amymeissner.com/blog/an-ongoing-history-of-teeth

When I was nine, I broke my two front teeth in an accident at a friend's house, and when I say it's the gift that keeps on giving, I'm dead f-ing serious. Most recently, my beautiful 10-year-old-finally-I-was-at-a-place-in-my-life-where-I-could-afford-it veneer on one tooth exploded, leaving me with a horizontal crack millimeters away from meeting in the middle and maybe/probably sloughing off. Like, you know, while you're on vacation. Did you know there are a number of dentists in Lihue, Kauai who specialize in dental emergencies? There are. I programmed their numbers into my phone before we left Alaska, but I never had to use them.

Amy Meissner, textile artist | From the post An ongoing history of teeth. | www.amymeissner.com/blog/an-ongoing-history-of-teeth

I talked about memory in another post called A History of teeth. How it is fleeting. Reshaped again and again. But going through this at 45 -- the shots (were there 3? or 4?) having my veneer and the crown beside it pried off, cracking and splintering, filling my mouth with shards and exposing the brown nubs beneath, then wearing a one-piece-double-tooth temporary affair, much like a rabbit tooth a few shades too white for two weeks while the "real" crowns were created  -- it all returned me to my 9-year-old self. 

Vulnerable. Wanting to hide. Unable to sleep.

And reminded me how the body, how pain, holds memory.
​
Amy Meissner, textile artist | From the post An ongoing history of teeth. | www.amymeissner.com/blog/an-ongoing-history-of-teeth

We've discovered that what remains of one tooth has a fracture disappearing beneath my gum, leading into the root. I may have 10 more years with this stub, or 20, or a handful of weeks. My dentist said if I feel intense pain ("You will know..."), we can't opt for a root canal on such a fragile shard, that it would be better to take it out completely.

A dental implant is a process, involving a number of frightening steps, and time. Suffering.

But for now, I have two new crowns. Lovely, ever so slightly different from the former, flatter on the bottom, a little too perfect, with a different curve along the backside that I can't keep my tongue off of. They are an unknown maker's idea of what my teeth should look like. This hand different from the one who fashioned them 10 years ago. Different still from what my natural teeth would have been like, if given the chance. 

Working along the ghosts of women, other unknown makers whose cloth I use in my own work, makes me think a lot about the luxuries I have, as a woman, which they did not. 100 years ago, I would have broken my teeth at age nine and they would have remained that way, turning brown, decaying and eventually pulled due to infection. And I would have screamed for them to please pull the teeth, because this was the place I was in just 48 hours ago, before I returned to my dentist with my molded night guard mouth piece (I'm a clencher), which didn't fit the new crowns, and a plea for pain killers to take the edge off the ice pick that had lodged in my gums and was now probing my sinuses and reaching molars.

Amy Meissner, textile artist | From the post An ongoing history of teeth. | www.amymeissner.com/blog/an-ongoing-history-of-teeth

I'm not a pussy. I have a ridiculously high pain threshold. I had two natural childbirths, the second was frank breach. That's right. I delivered a frank breach daughter, the effect of crowning twice, with no pain medication, an anesthesiologist standing by in an operating room filled with flustered nurses and about 20 other people who'd never seen an actual frank breach delivery, also my husband, my midwife, a good doctor-friend and a perinatologist who was a BAD ASS, who'd done deliveries like this before and used her entire body to corkscrew that girl out of me in one elegant movement that my husband still demonstrates for friends. Ask him. He'll do it. 

Did I mention I also had an undiagnosed 12 mm herniated disk in L5 at the same time, and my foot had gone numb 2 weeks before she was born?

It's still numb because I have permanent nerve damage.

The threshold. It's high.
This is not a good thing.

Amy Meissner, textile artist | From the post An ongoing history of teeth. | www.amymeissner.com/blog/an-ongoing-history-of-teeth

But this time, I was ready to ask the dentist to pull it. Pull. It.

Within 36 hours of taking antibiotics, it's now become clear I had an infection. That exposed crack a conduit for whatever bacteria wormed its way deep inside the root. 

And isn't that the way? How pain starts as something humming with each heartbeat, then a pulsing hot throb and finally a snap of unspooled threads reaching far beyond the epicenter? And when relief comes, if it comes, it settles like an animal at your feet. Blinking and sighing.

So, Dear Aude, thank you for asking. I am fine.
Now.
​
I am fine now.


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Previous posts:

One year ago: PechaKucha

Two years ago: Yellow quilt.

And lastly:

If you are interested in a sometimes-newsletter (I just sent out my first one even though I've been talking about it for over a year), please visit the contact page. I'm kind of excited by how many people subscribed already. Okay, blown away actually.

If you have subscribed and didn't receive a newsletter last week with exhibition and Inheritance Project updates (shit's happening, some of it I can't even tell you about yet), please check your spam filter and mark me as non-spammy. Because, I'm not. Nothing makes me feel better than an empty inbox.

Well, other things make me feel pretty good, too.
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9 Comments
Lara Ferguson
4/21/2017 01:04:01 pm

Dear Amy - Sometimes you put into words exactly what's floating around in my brain.

My teeth seem to have been "under construction" since I can remember and I'm now facing some implants (re-crowns and root canals are so 90's at this point in the process - I used to be afraid of them - ha!). I have been thinking recently about how the shame seems to be getting bigger than the pain, and that actually makes me less brave.

As mothers I think we tend to equate strength with grit sometimes, as in gritting our teeth through pain, and I'm a bit floored at how the shame seems bigger than the biggest pain I could imagine. It takes me years to work up the courage to schedule a perio or endodontist appointment, and I'm beginning to think that's more about my self-acceptance threshold than my pain threshold.

Thank you for sharing your truth through your artistic journey,
Lara

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Amy Meissner link
4/21/2017 04:40:29 pm

Lara,
I so love what you've shared here. Thank you for putting it out there and making that connection. Since posting this, I've received emails and Facebook comments with more and more stories. You aren't alone, even though it feels like such an intimate and vulnerable situation. I wish you well on your journey. It sounds expensive and painful, indeed.

:(
XO
Amy

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judy martin link
4/21/2017 08:34:22 pm

Hey Amy

The world is so much better now that you are here.
Your honest writing and truthful art works can save more than you. They can save other women. Our pain, Our work.
You give it a voice.
Thank you.

Love you so much
xo

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Amy Meissner link
4/22/2017 06:43:48 pm

I'm about to fan girl out here, Judy. Thank you so much for your kind words here, and more importantly for making Lovely Oona, who came to my recent pop-up studio at the Anchorage Museum. It was so special to have her support.
Lucky, lucky me, I get to see you soon,
XO
Amy

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Olga Norris link
4/22/2017 04:34:47 am

Amy - wow! a pole-vaulter's pain threshold! I always thought that I had a fairly high threshold, but you are flying. I think however, that pains in the head are just too close to the seat of our consciousness, and therefore less controllable to a safe distance. Pains in the teeth really are 'in your face'. You must be exhausted - but I love that vision of the relief curled like a cat on your feet: comfortable, but still keeping you still so as not to disturb it.

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Amy Meissner link
4/22/2017 06:48:53 pm

Olga,
So wonderful to hear from you--and yes, mouth and head pain renders one so vulnerable. Several days later, I still feel "fuzzy" and have had the terrifying thought that some strange bacteria has gone straight to my brain. The reality is, I'm calorie deficient and exhausted because it hurt to eat and sleep for so long. I'm working on nourishing myself in many ways right now. One way is to hear from such lovely women, unknown in various ways, who are still caring enough to reach out.
I appreciate this so much,
XO
Amy

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Lorie McCown link
4/23/2017 04:57:51 am

Eeeeewww! Ok, I have my cringe factor up hi fi now. Jayzus, mercy, and lawd lawd...on your vacay? And now I have to look up frank breach (I thought he was my realtor..) Lady, you need servants and need em now. Hey, I'm buying first round next week, and no heavy mastication is involved. Hang in there chica. Love ya, L

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Michelle Turinsky
4/24/2017 09:02:43 am

"And isn't that the way? How pain starts as something humming with each heartbeat, then a pulsing hot throb and finally a snap of unspooled threads reaching far beyond the epicenter? And when relief comes, if it comes, it settles like an animal at your feet. Blinking and sighing."

So perfectly said—you have me in tears again over my breakfast. I'm so glad to hear that you're on the other side of this Amy. Take care!

Reply
Amy Meissner link
4/24/2017 12:16:11 pm

Oh no! No more breakfast tears...although I've had my fair share of them lately, too, for all sorts of reasons. I hope you are well and I miss our time in the Handwork room...I don't get in there much lately, but wish I could.
XO
Amy

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    Amy Meissner, textile artist. Photo credit Brian Adams, 2013. www.amymeissner.com

    Amy Meissner

    Artist in Anchorage, Alaska, sometimes blogging about the collision of history, family & art, with the understanding that none exists without the other.

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