Bit of Ivory

Someone would ask me to explain.

Teri asked:
This has nothing to do with computers. What happened to your front six teeth? Or do we really want to know this story?

It’s a long story, but not particularly gory. Well, I guess one part might sound a bit unpleasant. Anyway, it all started because one of my front baby teeth–the one on my left– was a double tooth. When it came out, only the front tooth grew back in. That left me with one too few teeth in front. I got braces in third grade to move the teeth to get a big enough space for a fake one.

But before I got the braces, I was playing Don’t Touch the Floor (which involves much jumping around on furniture), and I jumped onto a pillow on the floor. The pillow slipped out from under me and I fell face first onto the hearth of our fireplace. It cracked my other front tooth in half, which lodged in my lip. I got bonding on the tooth and stitches on my lip.

After I had a big enough space, in 6th grade, I got a retainer with a tooth on it, on the understanding that I’d eventually get a bridge, which involves grinding down and capping the two adjacent teeth (in this case, my unbroken front tooth and my first canine) with a floating tooth in the middle. I got that done in 9th grade– and since we were at it, we decided to cap my broken tooth as well. I also had rather a large gap between the tooth opposite the one that was missing and my first canine. My orthodonist said that braces wouldn’t help, so we decided to cap that tooth as well, making it a little bigger and the gap a little smaller. So that made a total of five fake teeth.

Unfortunately, the work I got done in 9th grade looked awful. The teeth were way too big for my mouth, and just weren’t styled very well. They also had porcelain on the front only, and metal on the back. My gums became really big and puffy and bled alot, as well. Mom was really upset, but by that time I’d had to go to the dentist 5 times in two weeks and wear awful temporaries and frankly, I was sick of it. Mom was so upset over what that dentist had done with my teeth (that and he was just a pig) that we eventually found a new dentist. The new dentist agreed that my teeth looked awful, and thought that I was probably allergic to the metal on the backs of them. Since I’d got them done, a new type of cap had come out that was entirely porcelain. We had to wait until I’d had them for five years to replace them, though, or the insurance wouldn’t cover it.

Finally, at the end of 2001, I’d had them for five years. My new dentist decided to put a veneer on my other canine to balance out my mouth. He also recommended I get a gingivectomy (cutting my gums) to relieve some of the puffiness and make my smile more teeth than gums. I got that done, then got the new caps. The first time they came back, they were way too big again, but after sending them back to get cut, they looked great– much better than the old ones, I must say.

See? Long story. But highly interesting, I think. All these trips to the dentist and getting novacaine has pretty much cured me of any fear I might have. A shot in the mouth is nothing to me anymore. So I guess that’s a good thing.