Crowning Glory

I told you that I would save this next story for another time, but that time has come!

I have two porcelain crowns and a bridge which are in the front of my face(not very nice I can tell you!) that have given me some angst over the past few years. I have always looked after my teeth, but have had absolutely rubbish teeth for as long as I can remember and have spent a small fortune on them over the years and I am still spending heaps now.

You may remember my talking about a dentist who I was seeing quite a while ago, who worked in the same building where I worked? After I had been seeing him for a while I was not very happy with the dental work I received, even though the person was nice enough. I asked around to see whether anyone knew of a different and good dentist, and my friend Annie had just been going to a wonderful young man, so, I decided that I would go and to see him and made an appointment for the next week.

On the Friday I went to bed and woke up with a jolt, with something in my mouth - I spat it out and in the dark, tried to make out what it was and thought......OMG!!! Is that my tooth????? It wasn't, it was three teeth that are joined together forming the bridge, and they had fallen out doing - nothing!!

I went into my daughter's room and tried (with me not being able to speak well at the best of times) to say to her, "look what's happened to me"! But, she didn't understand so a comedy of errors took place and after a while she looked at my face and then shrieked...."ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh it's terrible, horrible, Mum get it away from me". Nice type huh!! She hid her face away and kept on saying, "what are you going to do?" I didn't know - I was just after someone to tell me that everything was going to be alright, not hiding from the grotesque thing that was me!!

After much debate we went to bed then and as soon as we woke up, my daughter rang this new dentist and told the receptionist what had happened, and by an incredible stroke of luck (no pun intended!) there happened to be a free space in the afternoon! When we got there, the dentist remembered that I was supposed to be seeing him later that week and commented that it would not be good if I had had to wait for almost a week for my appointment with no front teeth!

Dr* took a couple of x-rays to see why they had actually fallen out and then he came and said "the good news or the bad" and me being me, said "give it to me straight and I will take the bad please". He showed me the teeth and pointed out to me that the other dentist had ground my teeth down so far that they didn't have enough tooth left to hold on too! He said that it was a miracle that it hadn't come out before now and he would have to do something some remedial work on them. I had to have the Dr* glue them back in for now, because the next day I was meant to be going to Chris's memorial and there was no way I could go looking like I did!!

We talked about the options that I had with my teeth the next two times that I had to see him. I will have to get two new crowns at a later stage, but the most important thing at present, is to work on how to be able to have an implant but because the bone under my front tooth had been badly damaged and has receded, there was not enough of it left to hold an implant, which was the only way I could overcome this problem and it didn't look too good at this stage. Dr* spoke to a couple of his colleagues and together they came up with a plan to save my teeth - if I was agreeable to it.

I was extremely nervous when Dr* sent me to Castle Hill to meet his colleague (who was one of his university Dentistry teachers) and have him have a look at my gum/teeth and talk to me about the conundrum that we had and what they were suggesting to do about it, which was - to cut my gum and put some mesh and some artificial bone shards to fill the space underneath where my implant would go and build it up this way.

They would then close the gap in my gum with stitches and hope that the bone would grow and after 6 months, hopefully, I would have a new thicker bone that they could do something worthwhile with, like - give me a gorgeous new implant!

That all happens this coming Wednesday and Friday, so, I will keep you up to date on that score.

13.1.13