I have to get dentures :(

[oregano]

I had to have my last two bottom molar teeth removed yesterday. One of them was so rotten that it was impervious to anasthetic, so the surgeon had to bring in a hygenist with a strong grip to hold my head steady while she ripped it out. Now I have so few bottom teeth left that the rest of them have to come out to make way for a denture plate. I see the general dentist on 28 March to get fitted for dentures, then I have to see an oral surgeon to go under general anasthesia to have the rest of my bottom teeth ripped out, then I will be on a liquid diet until the swelling goes away and I can start wearing dentures. So I am stuck in Sacramento for at LEAST another month. I still plan on a trip north on 21 March to fix the electrical system in the tiny home, but I will have to be back by the weekend so I can get fitted for dentures.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

Actually having dentures isn’t so bad. I’ve had to get them four years ago mostly because I didn’t see a dentist because the last office that I used ruined so many of my teeth and really screwed up a crown that kept falling out every three months and three of the four crowns that made had serious flaws and wasted my time by making me wait in the dentist chair for literally two and a half hours even for a six month check up. There was also one dentist there that was extremely rude and condescending to me while he did a root canal to prepare for the crown that they screwed up. This made me not trust any dentists and the only one I felt I could trust didn’t take my insurance and I didn’t have enough to pay out of pocket. No one can actually tell that I have dentures.

 

[Raggamuffin]

I've had no end of dental work recently. You just have to remember they're doing this so you can be more comfortable in the long run.

Ed

 

[Suzette]

I wear dentures too. Life time dental phobe.
If you can, consider getting the dentures that are anchored with pins. The pins keep the bone subsidence at bay.
But yes, it will feel good to no longer have the horrible pain! Though sometimes I get phantom pain the same way an amputee might need to scratch a limb that isn't there.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

I’ve always sort had bad teeth with them constantly getting cavities even if I didn’t very much sugar. On top of that, the woman who helped my raise me also used flossing and brushing my teeth as a form of punishment where she’d make me brush my teeth hard for four minutes and if they weren’t “clean” enough, she’d make me brush for another four minutes and keep adding four more minutes until she was satisfied. There were times where I spent twenty minutes doing this and I’m spitting out blood all because this crazy woman wanted my teeth to be perfectly white. And when I say white, I mean pure shining snow white which is impossible. Flossing was even worse as the floss always came out bloody because I was constantly cutting the gums just to get everything out because if I didn’t, I’d have to do it again. I used those flossing picks and I managed to actually break them by forcing the floss thread into the gap between my teeth that the thread would pop out. It was horrible and I stopped brushing my teeth so often after I cut off ties with the woman. I still used mouthwash and brushed before bed but I really didn’t floss because I didn’t want to spit out blood every single time I was done. So I wasn’t doing a lot of dental care for myself because I was lazy but rather because I saw part of the obsessiveness of people wanting perfectly white teeth to be extremely unnatural and a reminder of the abuse I endured. I was forced to used an electric toothbrush that ran on batteries which I kept needing to replace because I was being forced to brush my teeth for so long and I dreaded when they started to die and made the sound grow weak as the woman actually listened to the toothbrush to make sure I was brushing my teeth and would get angry if she didn’t hear it any more. And she wondered why I went through so many AA batteries. And the bristles would always look like I’ve been using the toothbrush for six months and needed replacing after only two weeks! I just couldn’t keep doing this after I had escaped from her and the dentist office I was going to was wasting a lot of my time. I’d go in up to an hour before my scheduled time at 1:00 and be forced to wait in the until about 2:00, get into the chair and have them do some normal things before leaving me at 2:30 and I am stuck in the chair until 4:00 when they come back to me and finish a six month cleaning and I got out at 4:30. I know this is accurate as there was a clock on the wall at an angle I could see perfectly well and see what time it was. This happened every single time I went into that place. There were literally empty chairs. I just quit going there because I had better things to do than wait all afternoon just to get a check up. They left me there in the middle of root canals and had my mouth held open and it got to the point my entire mouth became bone dry and my throat felt so scratchy because of how dry it had become. I even fell asleep out of pure boredom for maybe half an hour only to wake up and they still left me there. The first crown they made had this gap that made stuff go into it and dissolve the cement holding it, the second was too long so it kept hitting my one bottom tooth incorrectly to the point it got knocked loose, and the third had a post that was bent and caused the same issue as the second crown! I had three crowns for the same tooth made by them in less than three years and they kept messing it up! My dad’s friend, who is the dentist I would have gone to if he had taken my insurance at the time, had to make the fourth crown but by then the tooth it was attached to was so weak from all of the flaws causing it to fall out that it just broke off and I couldn’t get it reattached any more and a plate had to be made. Even worse is the first two crowns were made when I was still around the crazy woman and she blamed me for the crown falling out and saying that I caused it to happen.

 

[Suzette]

@Captain Jigglypuff , What a nasty, evil woman! ::Hugs::

 

[MyLifeAsAnAspie]

I've had dental problems in middle age, but only lost one molar. Then I started studying sugar and "got religion" about how likely dangerous it is. I suppose I had looked at it as a food ingredient that was only dangerous if you had weight problems. I now see it as a questionable food additive that has not been used for very long and has been certainly causing a health disaster ever since it's use began. It is quite addictive and has caused has social ills such as the original slavery in the Americas and many other places too. Presently, due to ever increasing sugar consumption, there has been a rapid increase in NAFLD. This is based on very recent research findings. When I quit sugar a few years ago the sugar/NAFLD connection was now yet proven.

Spoiler: NAFLD

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease - Symptoms and causes

 

[Gift2humanity]

I had to have my last two bottom molar teeth removed yesterday. Now I have so few bottom teeth left that the rest of them have to come out to make way for a denture plate. I see the general dentist on 28 March to get fitted for dentures, then I have to see an oral surgeon to go under general anasthesia to have the rest of my bottom teeth ripped out, then I will be on a liquid diet until the swelling goes away and I can start wearing dentures. So I am stuck in Sacramento for at LEAST another month. I still plan on a trip north on 21 March to fix the electrical system in the tiny home, but I will have to be back by the weekend so I can get fitted for dentures.

Sorry to hear this.
I think you have been treated badly when you say "One of them was so rotten that it was impervious to anasthetic, so the surgeon had to bring in a hygenist with a strong grip to hold my head steady while she ripped it out."
They should never have done this to you.
I would like to share an experience with you.
I used to use a dentist with an in house surgeon.
I had a really rotten tooth, it was painful, it was a root canal filled, and the dentist who did my checkup said I would need to see the surgeon to have it removed.

On the day of the surgery, the first numbing injection did not work, nor did the second, and when I asked for a third, the surgeon got quite irritable and asked if I had taken my antibiotics.
I told him I was not prescribed any.
I hear that local anaesthetics do not work on active infections.
The surgeon then told me I had to breathe in and out when he told me to, which I did, and the extraction was completely painless, in effect, he was telling me to do a breathing meditation.
Breathing meditation meant that the local anaesthetics I had to get my toenails removed were absolutely painless, anyway I digress, you should have been prescribed antibiotics, to kill the infection, then the numbing agent would have worked. The experience must have been very painful for you.
I really do hope that the rest of your treatment goes well.
I remember being given a denture, at the time I was a real wuss.
I was so scared and nervous that I kept gagging when the dentist put the stuff there and make the mould off into my mouth, so that the impression was wrong and the denture did not fit and I gave up on it.
On a more positive note I know people who have been fitted with dentures and have got used to them. My late dad had all of his teeth taken out when he was 18 and he had no trouble with dentures. He still has a nice smile and in my opinion you would not know he had dentures.

 

[Fino]

How in the world did they get to be in such a state?

 

[oregano]

How in the world did they get to be in such a state?

I never used to take care of them. I've had pretty awful mental illness for much of my life, and after I moved out of the house after HS I never wanted to do any sort of hygiene routine, brushing teeth, bathing, etc. My dentist at the time kept telling me that I needed to take care of my teeth, that he was doing so many fillings that eventually the teeth would be too weak to save and have to be ripped out, but I didn't care for some reason. @MyLifeAsAnAspie, yes I was heavily addicted to sugar too, and would eat a 1 pound bag of M&M's in one sitting at one point. My teeth always had a thick layer of yellow gunk on them from all the sugar, and I wouldn't brush them either. It wasn't until I started winding down my consumption of sugar, and getting on the right combo of antipsychotics, that my teeth improved. But it was too late. And yes I have NAFLD too.

 

[oregano]

@Gift2humanity, I was prescribed antibiotics, but the tooth was simply too rotten. Yes, this is an all-purpose office with a regular dentist and an oral surgeon in house, and the surgeon was really nice unlike yours, she tried giving me injections and they worked for one of the teeth (I had two molars ripped out) but she warned me that the other tooth (which was root canaled, yes) was extremely rotten and had a huge abscess underneath the roots and that it would likely hurt bad when it was ripped out and I said I understood and to go ahead with it because of how rotten it was. To her credit she did her best to extract it as quickly as possible, and she did so in about 15 seconds, then she let me catch my breath before she took out the other molar. She showed me the extracted tooth which was extremely black and she said that there was no way she could have numbed it 100% because it was so rotted, and she showed me the crown which was on it which was filled with black gunk. The area was as numb as she could get it, but she told me that she did the best she could and that the advanced state of decay was just too much.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

For me, I kept getting cavities no matter how much sugar I cut from my diet. I barely ate any sweets other than an occasion bowl of ice cream. I was drinking diet soda and I still got cavities. I quit drinking stuff with artificial sweeteners because I saw scientific lab tests that showed it was more unhealthy than sugar as the artificial sweetener makes your body crave real sugar and so you end up eating a cookie or something else with sugar in it. No Matter what I did, I kept having issues with my teeth and being abused in the form of dental care didn’t help either. The crazy lady was excessively obsessed with perfectly white teeth that were constantly stain free. She got mad at me because I couldn’t keep my teeth looking like they did after a regular cleaning a few days later and once made me use those whitening strips which I quit using after two weeks because they made my teeth hurt a lot while the strips were in my mouth and whenever I tried to eat. She used whitening toothpaste, whitening mouthwash/rinse, and whitening strips on her own teeth and they weren’t blindingly white and a bit yellow from smoking and she was fine with that but my teeth looking a bit beige was my fault and I didn’t take care of my teeth hard enough and she’d make me brush longer and harder. There were times my hand went completely numb because I was being forced to brush my teeth so long. And when I had an abscessed tooth, she said it was proof that I didn’t brush my teeth hard enough. This obsession of hers got to the point that during the one trip I took with my dad to California and Taiwan, he complained that I was brushing my teeth too long and too obsessively and probably didn’t realize it wasn’t my fault and I was mostly doing it habitually out of fear of being punished for not having my teeth be “clean” enough. Even my one therapist was disturbed with how bad the obsession with how my teeth looked was for this woman.

 

[Gift2humanity]

@Gift2humanity, I was prescribed antibiotics, but the tooth was simply too rotten. Yes, this is an all-purpose office with a regular dentist and an oral surgeon in house, and the surgeon was really nice unlike yours, she tried giving me injections and they worked for one of the teeth (I had two molars ripped out) but she warned me that the other tooth (which was root canaled, yes) was extremely rotten and had a huge abscess underneath the roots and that it would likely hurt bad when it was ripped out and I said I understood and to go ahead with it because of how rotten it was. To her credit she did her best to extract it as quickly as possible, and she did so in about 15 seconds, then she let me catch my breath before she took out the other molar. She showed me the extracted tooth which was extremely black and she said that there was no way she could have numbed it 100% because it was so rotted, and she showed me the crown which was on it which was filled with black gunk. The area was as numb as she could get it, but she told me that she did the best she could and that the advanced state of decay was just too much.

All I can say is hugs to you.