Before Picture – no crown just a big hole:

After Picture – beautiful, expensive crown in place:

It feels very weird to have a tooth there. Eating feels weird. For six months my tongue had to keep food out of that space and now there is something there. However, it is finally nice to be done with everything. It’s been 10 months since I started this whole process (and ~$3,000) and I’m finally DONE!

Hopefully I have don’t need any more dental work for a very long time!

Before we left his office they gave us an estimate of $2400 for the surgery. That night I felt sick to my stomach. That was a lot of money and that wasn’t even going to be the end of it. After the implant healed (~four months) we’d have to pay for the actual tooth (another $400).

Anyway. I had the surgery on December 30th (during my winter break from work and two days before my wedding anniversary) and everything went smoothly. Yay! Our anniversary, however, wasn’t the best one we’ve had. Joey booked one of my favorite rooms (before he knew I needed to have surgery) at the Anniversary Inn in Logan, Utah and I pretty much slept the entire time. Next year I will have to make it up to him.

After my surgery it took a long time before I could chew on the left side of my mouth – I have a big hole in my mouth where my tooth used to be – but I have finally gotten used to the hole and can chew like normal.

I attempted to take a picture of my mouth and this was the best I could get:

It’s not the most flattering picture I have of myself but you can see the implant (the silver part you see is the top of the implant) and that’s what I was going for.

So, at the end of April I will meet with the oral surgeon to make sure everything has healed correctly. Then I will make an appointment with my dentist to have an impression made (with the dental post in place) and the lab will make me a tooth and then two weeks later I will FINALLY get a tooth.

Note: If you are bored and/or need some entertainment, try to take pictures of the inside of your mouth.

Today I went to the dentist to get a crown on the tooth that has been giving me problems and I did not leave there with very good news. Apparently, the dentist was unable to do what he needed to do to finish the crown. My tooth was bleeding too much. That darn tooth! So, he stopped the bleeding (I don’t know how) and put a temporary crown on the tooth. After talking with the endodontist that performed the two root canals on my tooth, he informed me that I will need to have the tooth extracted and recommended I get a dental implant.

Not exactly what I wanted to hear today. Tuesday I have a consultation with an oral surgeon. I will keep you posted.

Well, I made an appointment with my old dentist and it was great to see him again. I don’t think I have ever looked forward to going to the dentist before but I was excited for this appointment. It was great to have a dental hygienist again and it was kind of nice to be able to watch TV while someone worked on my teeth. Everything was going great until the dentist looked at my x-rays. While he was looking at them we were having a conversation and he stopped mid-sentence and said “It looks like we’ve got a problem here…”

“WHAT?”

So they took a couple more x-rays and the dentist informed me that I had internal resorption on tooth #19. He then informed me I would need to see an endodontist for a root canal. Lucky me.

So, Monday Joey accompanied me to my root canal procedure. After they explained what they were going to do they asked if I needed anything and I jokingly said “How about a valium?” They laughed and then offered me some sedation options. After discussing it with Joey and the endodontist, I decided to go with the Versed so I could just “take a little nap” (I’d be conscious but wouldn’t remember anything). Before Joey had to leave the room he said “Let’s try an experiment. Try and remember green elephants”. As they were preparing me for the procedure I kept saying “green elephants” over and over in my head.

Well, the Versed worked great. I didn’t feel anything and I didn’t remember anything. Poor Joey had to deal with me all morning/afternoon asking him the same question over and over or telling him the same thing over and over (he said I kept telling him “I remembered green elephants”).

Joey left me in the car while he filled my perscription and I found this note the next day:

“Sweetheart, Stay in the car. I will be right back!”

I swear that was the first time I had seen the note. Man was I out of it.

Anyway. I slept most of the day and around 3:00 I was finally more “with it” and learned that they actually didn’t finish the root canal. I guess they ran into some complications (too much bleeding) so they did what they needed to and I have to go back in a month.

I am not sure what will happen next but whatever does happen I hope it comes with more Versed. Just kidding.

Before I go on, I should mention that this dentist is a very nice guy and I do not mean to attack him as a person.

I have been going to the “new” dentist for 3 years and his office does things slightly different than my “old” dentist’s office. First of all, his office is small and old. For some reason I have a problem that the building is old. It makes me nervous – especially the equipment in the office.

Second, he does not have any dental hygienists in his office. I don’t think I have ever had the dentist do EVERYTHING for a typical checkup before. Usually the dental hygienist sees you and then the dentist comes in and checks your teeth. Not really big deal and this dentist actually does a good job cleaning my teeth. He’s a little rough but I’m tough – I can take it.

Finally, he makes me do a fluoride treatment at the end of the checkup. He squeezes flavored fluoride into trays that I have to wear for one minute. It is disgusting and I haven’t done fluoride since I was a kid. My “old” dentist never made me do fluoride treatments. Again, not really a big deal. I guess I am just being picky.

So, my most recent appointment was awful. It was an appointment later in the day so I could go after work. When I got there nobody was at the front desk but I could hear them working in one of the rooms. I sat down in the waiting area and started reading a magazine. It was a good 30 minutes before the secretary came out to the desk and it was to answer her cell phone. I heard her tell the person on the phone that she was training somebody new and would need to call them back. She then looked at me and asked me how I was and if my insurance had changed. She did not mention the fact that they were late or how much longer they would be. That made me upset. I ended up sitting in the lobby another 30 minutes. It was well past my appointment time and I didn’t want to sit there very much longer. At this point I briefly thought about leaving or asking them to reschedule me.

Finally the secretary took me back in a room and quickly did my x-rays. (I should note that I have a hard time with x-rays because my mouth is so small. They hurt and I gag every time.) She kept jamming the x-ray film in my mouth and she seemed bugged that I was having a hard time. At this point I really wanted to leave.

I waited another 10-15 minutes for the dentist. He finally came into the room and did not mention anything about being over an hour behind. I could not believe it. He just smiled and said “anything new with your teeth?” Are you kidding me?! When he was cleaning my teeth I could hear his stomach growling. It also felt like he was going to rip my lips off my face. Ouch! The new assistant didn’t know how to suction either and the dentist didn’t seem to notice that I was drowning (or so it seemed). I really did not want to swallow all that crap that was collecting in the back of my throat.

At the end of the cleaning, I asked the dentist if we could skip the fluoride treatment and he must have thought I was joking. He explained why he has his patients do it and I told him that I haven’t done fluoride treatments for many years. While the new assistant and I were waiting for the secretary to come in and prepare the trays, the dentist left the room for a minute and the the new assistant whispered “my dentist doesn’t make me do fluoride treatments either”. Not a very good thing to say when you work for a dentist that does fluoride treatments but at least I am not crazy.

After 2 hours I was able to leave the dentist’s office. I don’t think I want to go back to that office. I do not appreciate how I was treated. They need to work on their customer service skills or something. Maybe I’m being unreasonable here and I’m willing to admit that. I just think it will be better for my wellbeing to find a different dentist. Don’t you agree?

Sorry to be so lengthy. I promise I won’t bring it up again (or at least for a while).

Anyway. Long story short (or at least I’ll try) – I had countless root canals to try and save my tooth and braces for 5 years to fix my overbite. Since I was not wearing my headgear like I was supposed to, the orthodontist suggested I have one of my upper teeth pulled to help move my teeth back faster. The orthodontist took the brace off the tooth he wanted pulled and I went to a dentist I had never seen before (not sure why I went to a new dentist). When I went to have the tooth pulled the dentist looked at my teeth, read the orthodontist’s note and started taking a brace off a different tooth. I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t quite sure what he was doing…plus, he’s the dentist. He should know what tooth to pull. Well he didn’t…he pulled the wrong tooth! That’s not even the worst part. After he realized he had pulled the wrong tooth, he put it back in my mouth and rewired my braces! He said that sometimes teeth will re-attach. Yeah right. The next day I went to another dentist to have it pulled out again. I think I had to be sedated the second time. I also had to have a second tooth pulled another time.

When I had my braces taken off, I had to have my front tooth pulled out because it was dead. By that time my parents found a wonderful dentist – in case you were worried. He recommended an oral surgeon to pull my tooth and give me an implant. The dentist and oral surgeon worked closely together. It took several years and surgeries but I now have “normal” looking front teeth.

So as you can see, I do not enjoy dentists. I get nervous when they are holding x-rays. I think to myself “are they sure they know what they are looking at?” Since the tooth-pulling-mishap, I have had one cavity filled and the dentist must have thought I was crazy when I asked him 100 times which tooth he was going to work on.

When I got married my insurance changed and my family dentist no longer accepted my insurance. I was very sad and scared to try another dentist. My husband suggested we go to his dentist. His family has gone to him for years and have really liked him.

Stay tuned for a post about my experiences with another new dentist.