TEEF!

My dental issues have caused no small amount of problems and setbacks. I thought it was a simple matter of replacing existing crowns and two bridges on top. I forgot about my bad luck!

Getting crowns here involve three or four visits. First the prep work and impressions, then another visit to make sure the new bare metal or zircon crown fits and to be adjusted as needed. Then the lab adds the porcelain and there’s another visit to make sure it still fits (because now it’s thicker and larger than before). It then goes back to the lab for final color and polishing. Each of these visits are 2-3 days apart. I feel like I’m practically living at the dentist’s office!

I had the extraction and root root canal I already mentioned. Then she removed two old crowns on that same side and took impressions. They don’t do temporary crowns here so I was left with a really ugly ground-down “peg” of a tooth right in front!

At my next visit she greeted me with the words no one ever wants to hear, “We have a big problem “. As we age, our teeth get worn down, mine more than most because the enamel on my teeth is so thin. My bottom front teeth are extremely worn and are actually hollow, with the pulp exposed. I also am missing 3 bottom molars on each side, which allows the opposing teeth to float downward. The lab said I didn’t have enough space in my bite for the new bridge; it would raise that side and cause the teeth on the other side to not meet at all!

The solution was to do both sides at the same time and raise the whole bite. And another advantage would have is that it would even out the bite pressure along my whole mouth instead of the current excessive pressure on one side. That is what caused the porcelain veneer to pop off two crowns on that side in the past.

But wait, it’s not over! Because my lower front teeth are so worn, and worn so unevenly, none of the front teeth in the new 12 tooth upper bridge met the bottom teeth. There was a huge gap of more than 1/4″! Of course you don’t want the new upper teeth to be hanging way down and crooked just so they’ll meet those old bottom teeth, so she went to work with that carbon paper stuff that shows where the teeth meet, and ground down each side & back tooth of the bridge as much as she could. I still have a gap in front but it’s much smaller.

The bad part was that she then had to remove the 5 tooth bridge on the other side so I was left virtually toothless on top! I had one set of upper & lower teeth way at the back that still met each other, and the next day the crown fell off one of those poor overworked teeth! And I was stuck with three of those ugly little toothpegs qright in front! I looked like a very macabre jack-o-lantern for more than a week.

It looks like the Expat Game Nights are a weekly event! I had to skip last Friday because of my scary Miss Snaggletooth look, but I got the new teeth just one hour before this week’s event and it was lots of fun again. I’m a little worried that my extreme introvert tendencies will eventually chafe at having a weekly “commitment” but for now I’m loving it! It’s always a mix of really interesting people. This week we had people from Finland, England and Ukraine plus 7 Americans and one Canadian.