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Goodbye, teeth.


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Goodbye, teeth.
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Brad
Selfish Heathen
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
 
2019-07-31, 07:33

In one hour, I will have two fewer teeth. Tooth numbers 21 and 28.

For a bit more than a year, I’ve had braces on my top and bottom teeth to try to correct some crooked teeth and a very misaligned bite. I knew from the outset that my orthodontist defined this as a “very challenging case” in his initial write up. Before that when I was getting different consultations, another orthodontist recommended jaw surgery to cut and reshape the whole damn thing. Even my current orthodontist agreed that surgery would be the best-case solution but that a lengthy bout of orthodontia could do most of the job at a fraction of the financial burden. (Again, thanks a lot US healthcare system!)

He and that other orthodontist also both indicated that if I didn’t opt for surgery, I was almost certainly going to have to forfeit one or two teeth. Now that day has come.

I am having two adult teeth permanently extracted, and I am anxious as hell. I’m not anxious about the procedure. That much I understand to be relatively routine, but I wish I were being sedated instead of just getting local anesthesia. What I'm more anxious about is, well, my mouth for the rest of my life. I’m told that after another one to two years of orthodontics, the other teeth will shift around enough to close the gap, but two teeth add up to one hell of a gap.

Has anyone else here had to lose teeth as an adult? Any experiences with anything remotely like this?

I guess I should be heading out soon…

* oh yeah, I did have my wisdom teeth removed like 20 years ago, but who would ever miss those damn things??

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Brad
Selfish Heathen
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
 
2019-07-31, 07:37

One more thing. As I've been telling my friends and colleagues about my adventures with braces over the last year and a half, I've also been strongly urging them that if they have any sons or daughters whose dentist suggest orthodontics treatment, please for their sake do not wait. The financial cost is generally less for kids and the roots and jawbones are more malleable and quicker to heal which makes everything physically easier to complete.

I desperately wish now that my parents had opted for orthodontia for me. There's a good chance I could have kept my teeth if I had been treated at a much younger age. At this rate, I'm just hoping to be done with this mess by the time I hit 40.

The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting.
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El Gallo
Formerly “MumboJumbo”
 
Join Date: Dec 2009
 
2019-07-31, 09:18

When I went for braces in my mid-40's I had one of the four front teeth removed right in the front of my bite because they were basically the wrong size and too crowded. One had slipped behind the other and it was creating problems with the gum line, facilitating bone loss in the area, etc.

They numbed it up, pulled it out root and all and that was it. I went and go the braces on the top half my mouth on the same day. I did a sort of double whammy to myself in that I wanted the tooth pulled and braces handled asap as the teeth being aligned would close the gap in the front of my face quickly.

I have good circulation and I'm in good health so everything closed up in terms of clotting and healed very quickly. I'm very happy with the result.
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kscherer
Which way is up?
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Boyzeee
 
2019-07-31, 10:14

I've had two teeth pulled, on opposite sides of my mouth; one top, one bottom. One of them had rotted and broke apart during extraction and was quite difficult. The other was very routine. One had failed on me when I was young and I just left it until it had to be pulled. The other I had a root canal performed (which failed). I had a root canal in another tooth and that one is always bugging me. At the end of the day, my recommendation is to save the money and have the tooth pulled rather than a root canal. They fail as often as they don't, and the tooth has to be pulled anyway.

I had braces at 16 (horrible thing when you're four-eyed, zit-faced, and in high school—please don't do that to your children!)

I brushed my teeth, my parents never let us have candy or soda, and still my teeth sucked (I had a cavity filled in every tooth by the time I was 18). My brother, who grew up in the same house with the same rules, never had tooth problems. Go figure. I firmly believe that genetics play a role.

You may be blessed with great teeth, you may be cursed with bad teeth. I know people who spend many minutes every day on their teeth and they're great, and people who do the same and have trash in their mouths. My current hygienist says I take very good care of my teeth. They are clean (she says I may be too aggressive ) and my gums look good. Still, I have to have about a grand of work done in January to repair damage done by old fillings.

Back to the subject: Your mouth is gonna hurt for a couple weeks, but the mouth also heels very rapidly. Just follow your dentist's instructions, don't use straws, keep the gauze in your mouth and bite down on it, mope and moan and ask your wife for some booby snuggles! You'll be fine!

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- Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. (Mat 5:9)
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