K
kidk
Junior member
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2010
- Messages
- 2
Help! I need some advice, or guidance, or something - somebody to bounce this off of..
Now I've always brushed, tried to keep my teeth nice but I've had horrible luck flossing - chipping teeth with the thread, tearing the string between teeth, summoning up blood or being unable to remove the string have all been commonplace for me.
Anyway things were okay until I was 18, went to Europe on a vacation, chipped my front tooth on French bread - and when I came back I went to a dentist to see what could be done.
He told me right then - a month after the initial chip - that the whole of the front teeth was shot from the root up, and he'd have to pull them.
I *knew* he was wrong! I could see a whole row of near-perfect teeth, minus a chip in the front one, and I was only 18! You could see on the films that the teeth were not "shot." So I left, or more precisely, ran away.
Over the next several years, my second tooth chipped, and gradually my front two teeth began to look very bad - small and angular. Someone actually came up to me on the bus and complimented me on having filed my teeth down like a Klingon. He was confused when I told him I hadn't done that.
And today I went into a new dentist, having finally been on the job long enough to have insurance, thinking I would finally get this dealt with.
I'm 28 now, and I feel that time is passing me by. So I go in there with high hopes.
The dentist's assistant takes several x-ray shots from all directions, including a panoramic (during which process the tech didn't care if the apparatus was chipping bottom front tooth blade surface), then - the actual dentist looks at the film for NO MORE THAN THREE MINUTES - and comes out and tells me,
"Yeah, poor baby, looks like these teeth have seen better days..." And leads into her plan to rip out every tooth in my head save two bottom eyeteeth, and fit me for dentures.
Dentures at 28???? I don't have Polio, I'm not a crack-head! Why would I have to go all the way to DENTURES at 28?
She tells me the cost of "1400 for each tooth" to do an implant would be way to high, something like 30,000 for the whole mouth. I tell her I'm not deterred by that figure and am willing to keep working at it until it's done. I tell her pain and fear won't stand in my way if there's something I can do to have TERRA FIRMA in the mouth at the end - implants or something that doesn't float in a cup by the side of my bed at night.
She tells me that "well let's do the extractions, then let the dentures sit in there about 6 months or a year, make sure all the bacteria is gone and everything, and then we can look at what we have and think about doing implants."
What I need to know, or at least guess-timate, is, is this lady giving me the grim and ugly truth that all dentists will echo? Or is she reading me by my appearance and age as being only good for the $1800 extraction costs over insurance, and not the long-term 30k that implants (might) cost? Or is she just making an easy solution for a long and convoluted problem?
I'm 28, and I haven't been in any kind of a relationship with anybody in over 5 years because of appearance. The last girl who asked me to kiss her I said no (and not because of her, but she didn't believe that - she had great teeth) ... I'm still in my twenties and I'm not a bad looking guy. But if I get float-in-the-glass dentures at my age, I'm thinking there's a good chance it won't endear me to the opposite sex. And at my age, my priority with my teeth is less about "feeling good" and more about "looking good." I don't know what to do..
The thought of me having dentures at 28 is horrifying, and I don't think justifying it or getting comfortable with it is going to change that.
Open to any advice - thanks for listening -
Now I've always brushed, tried to keep my teeth nice but I've had horrible luck flossing - chipping teeth with the thread, tearing the string between teeth, summoning up blood or being unable to remove the string have all been commonplace for me.
Anyway things were okay until I was 18, went to Europe on a vacation, chipped my front tooth on French bread - and when I came back I went to a dentist to see what could be done.
He told me right then - a month after the initial chip - that the whole of the front teeth was shot from the root up, and he'd have to pull them.
I *knew* he was wrong! I could see a whole row of near-perfect teeth, minus a chip in the front one, and I was only 18! You could see on the films that the teeth were not "shot." So I left, or more precisely, ran away.
Over the next several years, my second tooth chipped, and gradually my front two teeth began to look very bad - small and angular. Someone actually came up to me on the bus and complimented me on having filed my teeth down like a Klingon. He was confused when I told him I hadn't done that.
And today I went into a new dentist, having finally been on the job long enough to have insurance, thinking I would finally get this dealt with.
I'm 28 now, and I feel that time is passing me by. So I go in there with high hopes.
The dentist's assistant takes several x-ray shots from all directions, including a panoramic (during which process the tech didn't care if the apparatus was chipping bottom front tooth blade surface), then - the actual dentist looks at the film for NO MORE THAN THREE MINUTES - and comes out and tells me,
"Yeah, poor baby, looks like these teeth have seen better days..." And leads into her plan to rip out every tooth in my head save two bottom eyeteeth, and fit me for dentures.
Dentures at 28???? I don't have Polio, I'm not a crack-head! Why would I have to go all the way to DENTURES at 28?
She tells me the cost of "1400 for each tooth" to do an implant would be way to high, something like 30,000 for the whole mouth. I tell her I'm not deterred by that figure and am willing to keep working at it until it's done. I tell her pain and fear won't stand in my way if there's something I can do to have TERRA FIRMA in the mouth at the end - implants or something that doesn't float in a cup by the side of my bed at night.
She tells me that "well let's do the extractions, then let the dentures sit in there about 6 months or a year, make sure all the bacteria is gone and everything, and then we can look at what we have and think about doing implants."
What I need to know, or at least guess-timate, is, is this lady giving me the grim and ugly truth that all dentists will echo? Or is she reading me by my appearance and age as being only good for the $1800 extraction costs over insurance, and not the long-term 30k that implants (might) cost? Or is she just making an easy solution for a long and convoluted problem?
I'm 28, and I haven't been in any kind of a relationship with anybody in over 5 years because of appearance. The last girl who asked me to kiss her I said no (and not because of her, but she didn't believe that - she had great teeth) ... I'm still in my twenties and I'm not a bad looking guy. But if I get float-in-the-glass dentures at my age, I'm thinking there's a good chance it won't endear me to the opposite sex. And at my age, my priority with my teeth is less about "feeling good" and more about "looking good." I don't know what to do..
The thought of me having dentures at 28 is horrifying, and I don't think justifying it or getting comfortable with it is going to change that.
Open to any advice - thanks for listening -
