• Dental Phobia Support

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keep teeth or get dentures?

I

ismene422

Junior member
Joined
Sep 19, 2006
Messages
4
I know this is wrong but I wanted to give enough info about my situation.

I've had several bad experiences with dentists....Like 5 years ago I had a bad dentist who told me not to worry about a cavity and it got to the point where I had to have a root canal...He botched it and broke a tool off iin there and dug around for weeks trying to get it out. Well he didn't and a year later I had to get that tooth pulled. Then a year later I went and got braces and 7 months later my ortho skipped town took my money and left me without treatment for months and I had to pay someone else to take them off. Needless to say I'm scared of dentists...

Well the past few years I've had several cavities and another root canal. My teeth have always been in bad shape period...Well this year in general I've had a lot of female problems and 2 surgerys to try and fix what is wrong. I'm on a high dose of hormones to "correct" that problem. I've had so much pain in that aspect of my life this year, that I can't take much more. Well My two top back teeth on both sides are chipped/broken up to the root and I can't even chew on the left side of my mouth from a root canal that never got a crown on it due to lack of money. That tooth now has a huge hole in it to my gum..My front teeth have a chip in between them and a most of them have little holes near the gum. A couple of them actually have pretty big holes..My bottom teeth are totally crooked and I'm missing a tooth from a prior extraction. The bottom line is that I've been afraid to go to the dentist this year and now that it's getting worse I know that i have to suck it up and deal with it. I really am at the point where if they can't fix this all in one wack while i'm asleep then I just can't deal with going and dealing with each tooth one by one. If it's as bad as i think it is I might just get them all pulled and get dentures, which would suck because i'm only 18!!!....I think as far as pain goes I can't handle anymore and it would be so much easier to just pull them all out and have a fresh pair of beautiful white STRAIGHT teeth. I'm not healthy enough to go to appointments every week because i'm not able to sit in the "chair'' for that long amount of time. Not to give to much information, but I have a severe bladder disorder and i can not sit there for hours without being able to go to the bathroom as soon as i need to. I already have to travel 3 hours north every week to get treatments for that.... What do you guys think? Am I being too hasty or should i just suck it up and keep my own teeth? Can they even fix it all in one wack while i'm sleeping? Would it be a mistake to get false teeth this early? Would it make my face look bad??? Thanks...
 
Re: Advice/Opinions

Without seeing your teeth it's impossible to give any really useful advice.

From what you've said, it sounds like you have massive decay issues and unless you are prepared to modify your diet and your sugar intake then the long term outlook for your teeth is pretty poor anyway.

You might want to ask yourself if you could stand to be wearing false teeth for the next 80 years. If you can be honest with yourself, then how you answer that one can give you an idea of what you should do next...
 
Re: Advice/Opinions

I had the same denture fantasy too. When I went for my initial chat with my lovely dentist I sobbed how I'd much prefer to get all my teeth taken out and just get dentures. He said this was a very, very bad idea and he always tries to save teeth if he can.

Basically he spelled it out to me like this - dentures are a lump of plastic in your mouth, a foreign object, they will never be the same as having natural teeth (or implanted ones). They might look better but they feel very different and chewing is a lot harder and you can have problems speaking with them. And once you get teeth extracted theres no putting them back in, aside from getting implants which are majorly expensive. Also I think it can change your face structure if your teeth are not there - you'll get wrinkly and your face will sag.

So I'd say do whatever you can to keep your natural teeth! There are lots of things dentists can do for you now, so go and see one and see what they have to say. Your teeth might not be as bad as you think.
 
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