Bear with me as I haven't eaten normal food since last Wednesday. I am experience the wonderful world of tooth replacement. I broke a tooth at a work lunch! It was not an Awesome experience! It sheered off right at the gum line and it was the tooth next to my front tooth. No way of hiding that one! I ran off to the bathroom and had my wonderful hubby pick me up as I had driven with others. It was completely traumatizing. My dentist as ever wasn't available so it was time to find an new one! Yeah! The were able to get me in the next day and had my records transferred right away. They cemented my tooth back in temporarily. I had options explained to me and a cast made of my teeth so they could make a flipper. I explained to them I had an upcoming dance performance and needed to do something about the missing tooth so I could perform. Even with this I am not smiling much in pictures.
About a week later the flipper arrived. It is like a retainer with a fake tooth on it. You can eat with it in but I found I preferred to eat without it. The first flipper was pretty terrible! They had me in right away and made me a new one. I didn't realize until much later that this would probably be with me for the next year. One major downside for it as well is it makes me kind of claustrophobic, it also is very hard to speak with understandably. After a month I have found I am starting to be able to say the letter E intelligibly again to an extent. Not sure if it will ever be perfect?
The next step was to see another type of dentist and then have a 3-D X-ray. It was kind of funny because my hair up in a high ponytail was too big for the machine and I had to take it down. Next I almost passed out when I found out what the cost was. It could be over $4,500 and insurance covers $600. Sigh...I almost started crying until they told me they had payment plans. That made me panic less! Then new panic as they told me this was in addition to the $1,500 the dentist would be charging me. To make this worse my husband had talked me into lowering our pretax contribution this year and I had a bunch of other medical test confirming I was fine earlier in the year so much of that was gone. Glad I was fine but it was expensive even without the Copay for doctor visits. Last bit of bad/good news was that an implant could take up to 10 months to be put in. Yikes! Starting to feel like I would have a flipper for life.
So I am finally relaxing into the flipper lifestyle when I go in for a cavity filling and I find out they want me to have the tooth removed right away and place the bone graft in. They scared me into saying yes. If I would have thought it through I would have waited because I needed a deep cleaning and I had the first dance class that night and travel plans for a long weekend. They were very good with the Novocaine, not so good with the chair controls. The assistant hit the controls by mistake during the graft, that was upsetting! Once that was in place they gave me a bunch of stitches. It was awful! The strings were so long I could hardly stand it as they tickled my face! Then I realized I had to work the next day and wasn't suppose to be active or talk. I am a receptionist/admin so that wasn't going to work! Boy what was I thinking letting them talk me into this so soon???
Sigh... So I have been spending the 4th of July weekend on a mostly liquid and soft food diet. Did find a protein drink called boost that is passable. Had to take penicillin so that also limited activity. Found out birth control pills can reduce success rates by 35% thanks to hubby research. Happy accident that I forgot to start my next pack so I am just going to stop for now!!!
As all of this is going on my hubby is recovering from having a Wisdom tooth pulled! He has only ever had one minor cavity from over-brushing. He was pretty freaked out to say the least. They wanted to take two of them out but he refused!
I am really hoping this will be he end of the tooth issues for awhile but then I think about the fact that I still need my fillings filled, possibly more stitches since mine fell out early and who knows what else.
Sigh... Back to the dentist tomorrow I guess! They are going to see if the graft is intact. I really really hope this doesn't mean I have to have 3 of these! Maybe it is ok and I will only need one, though they kind of thought I would need two.
After all of this, the tests earlier this year and re-catching the never ending cold I am thoroughly tired of doctors, dentists and all such things.
I am really looking forward to the end of this saga!!!
