Last Appointment Before Extractions

Hey guys.  Ok so I have a week left before my extractions happen.  I went to the dentist today to have a bite registry done.  It wasn't a lengthy process.  I went in and had to bite down on a piece of dental wax.  They lined my jaw up in the back and then I bit down.  They wanted to see how my teeth naturally line up so that they can take this into consideration when they make my denture.  It didn't take very long.  The dentist came in to see me to talk more about the extractions.  The doctor who will be doing the actual extractions is an anesthesiologist.  They've all told me that he is very good, but I honestly didn't expect them to tell me anything else.  I mean it's not like they're going to tell me he's horrible even if he is.  I did Google him and I know he's not.  He actually graduated from Pitt Dental School and was at the top of his class.  His patients have really good things to say about him so in this case they are right.  I guess the point I'm making here is that y'all really need to do your homework on these doctors who will be performing these procedures on your mouth if you are not already doing that.  I assume you are though because here you are reading my blog so that indicates to me that you are looking for information on what to expect.

This is going to be a twilight sleep procedure.  I know that probably sounds foreign to many of you and it did to me too so I looked it up.  This is what I found out.  They call it a twilight sleep because you will not be fully sedated.  During a full sedation the patient is placed so far out of consciousness that they don't even breathe on their own.  The surgical staff has to insert a respirator or a tube that goes down your throat so that it can breathe for you while the surgery is taking place.  Once the surgery is completed the tube is removed.  The patient often has no idea that the tube was even there.  They will be performing my extractions right in the dentists office so we will not have access to this type of equipment.  This means that I can't be fully sedated for this procedure.  Instead, it is going to feel like I am sleeping.  They can wake me up and ask me to move or do different things.  I will be able to respond, but I won't remember doing it.  As I understand it, the way this works is that I will not be able to eat or drink anything 8 hours prior to having the extractions done.  I have to wear loose clothing; nothing restricting.  They suggest sweat pants and a t-shirt.  It has to be short sleeved or sleeveless shirt because they need to have access to my arms.  I have to remove any jewelry that might get in the way; necklaces, earrings, nose rings, etc.  The doctor will be calling me the night before my extractions to give me some pre-op instructions.  Then, when I walk in there they are going to place an IV in my arm.  Once the IV is in, they will place the sedative through the port in the IV.  The doctor will be monitoring my sedation levels during the procedure to make sure there is enough medicine to keep me sedated the entire time.  Then, they will be giving me Novocaine injections to numb my mouth.  Once the Novocaine takes effect, they will begin the extractions.  Apparently it takes about 30 minutes to extract a full mouth of teeth.  I am not sure how long this procedure is going to take.  My dentist explained that healthy teeth are more secure in their sockets than unhealthy teeth and in my case, my teeth are already very loose in their sockets so extracting them should not be that difficult.  In some cases the tooth may be so eroded and brittle that the tooth actually breaks in half during the extraction process.  This makes it necessary for them to go beneath the gum surface and essentially dig for the root of the tooth in order to remove it.  When this happens there is more swelling and pain after the procedure is over.  I suppose it largely depends on how well your teeth hold up during the extractions that determines how much healing will be required later.

After speaking to my dentist about that entire process, I came out of the exam room and back into the waiting room, the dental assistant walked me out and told me not to worry that it will all be fine.  There were two other women in the waiting room and they both looked up at me as I was walking in there.  My mother had been talking to them while she was waiting for me so when I walked over to collect my coat from her one of them asked me if I was having my teeth extracted.  I told them I was having most of them extracted.  The woman in the corner told me that it would change my life.  I have to say that this woman did not have her teeth in.  I wasn't sure what point in the process that she was in.  The tone in her voice told me that she did not mean that this would change my life in a positive way.  She then went on to tell me that she had lost 80 pounds because she wasn't able to eat.  She had her teeth extracted a year ago and wasn't able to wear her dentures because they were so uncomfortable.  It seemed like she was trying to scare me out of having this done.  I knew that I didn't have options to save my teeth.  I had been trying to avoid having my own teeth extracted for 10 years at this point.  I had reached the end of the line.  I either had to allow them to continue on in the shape they were in, which likely would mean progressively more mouth pain or have them extracted.  There is no plan B.  The other woman with very natural looking teeth looked over at her and said, "I didn't have that experience at all."  After asking her a few questions, I was able to determine that she had her teeth extracted yesterday.  She was there for her post-op appointment.  My dentist asks to see his patients 24 hours after the time of extraction.  So she was there to have him check her gums.  She hadn't taken her dentures out of her mouth since they had been placed in after the procedure.  Her mouth didn't look swollen.  I couldn't even tell she had dentures.  She had no issues talking and she wasn't gagging.  She looked really good for someone who just had their teeth extracted the day before.  I asked her if she liked her teeth and she told me she did.  She assured me that I would be fine.  She wished me good luck.

I spent some time thinking about the fact that this illustrates exactly what I have read about as I've been researching this for the past 3 weeks.  It seems to me like there are 2 groups of people when it comes to dentures.  There is a group of people who have very little trouble, varying degrees of swelling, and heal quickly.  They seem to adapt very well to their dentures.  They don't experience a whole lot of trouble with gagging.  They realize that this isn't fun, but seem to deal with it without too many complaints.  Then, there is group 2.  They seem to have more of a traumatic experience dealing with the actual procedure.  A lot of pain and discomfort.  They have a hard time with the transition into a denture.  They experience gagging or can't wear their dentures for various reasons so they can't eat properly.  I guess it just causes me to wonder why people seem to have such extreme reactions to the process of having dentures.  I understand that this is a traumatic thing so I don't expect it to be easy, but what puzzles me is the fact that there is no middle ground here.  It's either people make the transition extremely well or with extreme difficultly.  It also causes me to wonder which group I will fall into after my teeth have been extracted.  I'm choosing to try to go into this with as much of a positive attitude that I can muster because I don't have a plan B.  This is my only option.

Note:  This was written on February 19, 2015.  It is being published on March 4, 2015.  I got behind in my blog entries and wanted to have time to edit each of these before publishing them to my blog.

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3:49 PM

Preparing For Dentures: Part 2

I really want this blog to be a place where I can post information in addition to my experience with dentures.  I think it might be helpful for some readers to see as many sides to this as I can present.  I realize that most of this is going to be me talking positively about my dentures and my experience, but in reality I don't want to promote the idea of getting them.  Some of us don't have any other option.  Our teeth are so bad that dentures are unavoidable.  For me, they have been a last resort and only after I went through 10 years of treatments to avoid this decision.  I will not have a full set of dentures.  I will only have a full top plate and a small bottom partial.  Not all of us get to this point because of heavy drug use or because of poor oral hygiene.  I got here mostly due to taking medications to control other illnesses.  There were a lot of factors going on that got me to this point.

If you can avoid the need for dentures, then it is better to have your natural teeth.  At some point in the future, I might write about how to prevent the need for dentures, but I didn't learn most of that until I began having problems with my teeth.  I won't really include that here because I assume if you are reading this, then you likely already have an extraction date set and are looking for information to prepare yourself for how to care for your dentures properly once you have them.

It's now a week before my extraction date and I am finding myself thinking about the things that I will need in order to care for my mouth and my dentures after the surgery.  I have read that proper oral care recommends to use warm saltwater rinses beginning on day 2 or 3 after surgery.  Then, I've read that there are special cleansers, brushes and additional items that I will need to purchase.  This is my list of items that I am taking with me as I go out to run my regular Saturday errands:

• Polident 3 minute soaking tablets
• Fixodent Original (denture adhesive)
• Denture Brush
• Denture Bath
• Alcohol Free Mouth Wash
• Orijel for mouth sores

This is a list of products that I would like to try out for my dentures.  According to reviews I have seen, these have been reviewed most favorably.  I have read some good reviews on Stain Away Plus, but this really isn't designed to be an every day cleaner for dentures.  It does have daily use directions, however, I have read that this has a bleaching agent in it to whiten dentures after prolonged coffee exposure or after a healthy night of drinking red wine.  The bleaching agent will probably lighten the "gum tissue" portion of your denture.  I really don't want to risk that so I will probably limit my usage of products like this to maybe once or twice a month.

The brands that you use really aren't all that important.  I read reviews on products that people had the most success with and chose products that I found to be most highly recommended by denture wearers.  You can choose whatever brand you want.  Proper denture care after having extractions is really going to come down to keeping your sutures clean and the bacteria out of your mouth as much as possible.  You are going to need a proper denture cleaner in order to remove the bacteria from your denture.  The most common type of cleanser come in the form of tablets.  You need to place your denture in the denture bath; a container used to hold your denture while they are not in your mouth.  It is important to fill up the sink with water or put a towel down in the sink before you remove your denture to avoid breaking them if you happen to drop them.  It is also important to wash your hands before removing or handling your denture.  Then, you can wash them using antibacterial dish soap using a denture brush.  You will want to brush the inside and outside of the denture.  I have heard that using a soft tooth brush meant for toddlers helps to get inside the denture.  However, a denture brush is recommended by the dental professionals.  Rinse them with cold water as hot water can warp your denture and cause them not to fit properly.  Then, you will need to fill your denture bath with cold water, place your denture inside and place a cleansing tablet into the denture bath.  It is going to fizz and remove the bacteria from your denture while it soaks.  The type of cleanser you use will depend on how long your denture will be kept in the denture bath.  They make cleansers for short periods of time for people who may only want to remove their denture while they are taking a shower.  There are also cleansers meant to be used for soaking overnight.  It all depends on what you are comfortable with.

Clearly you are also going to need a denture brush and a denture bath.  They sell these at drug stores or department stores.  They are typically found in the oral care section of the store in the same aisle you would find toothpaste and mouth wash.  I purchased a Sea Bond denture bath and also a Sea Bond denture brush in purple.  In addition to that, I purchased a pink Tinkerbell toddler tooth brush to get into small areas of my denture with.  I also purchased Crest Complete mouth wash that does not have alcohol in it.  I figured I might need that to rinse my mouth out later after I eat or something.  I'm going to have 8 natural teeth left and I was running low on it so that's really all that was about.

At first I'm probably not going to need denture adhesive because I imagine that sutures and denture adhesive don't play well together.  That's more of a later on down the road purchase.  I thought that after the swelling goes down that my denture might slip around a bit so it might be more comfortable for me if I had some until the dentist relines them.  I bought Fixodent original formula to try and next time I come to the store I'm going to buy Poligrip to compare the two and see which one I like better.

I also purchased some Orajel because I figured with all the talk of sore spots that I hear, then it would probably help with that.  I also got some Colgate rinse for mouth sores.  That's another later on down the road purchase.  I'm sure that the dentist will provide me with some type of antibiotic rinse or something to help me keep my mouth clean so that it can heal, but after that runs out I figured that this may help to care for any mouth sores that happen to show up.

These are just some things that were suggested to me by other denture wearers and things I purchased in order to prepare myself for any possible complication that may arise.  I have no idea what kind of condition I will be in after this is over so I wanted to prepare as much as I could to limit the need for going out for things afterwards.  Plus, it's helping me mentally adjust to the idea of wearing dentures before I actually have them.  The girl at Wal-Mart was probably looking at me oddly because here I am with obviously natural bad teeth buying denture products.  Or, it's possible that she thought, now there's a person who needs dentures.  Perhaps I'm over thinking it and she was simply standing there wondering if it was time to go home yet.  Anyways, I wanted to offer up a list of things that you may need if denture wearing is in your near future.  I hope it helps.

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10:28 AM

Preparing For Dentures

As I mentioned before there were 3 appointments that I had to make with my dentist prior to having my teeth extracted.  The extraction date is set for February 25, 2015.  It gives me 3 weeks from my initial consultation until the extraction date.  The second appointment was set for February 11, 2015.  I had to have impressions taken of my teeth so that they could have a mold of my teeth to work with.  The mold of my dentures would be made from this impression.  I didn't realize until a friend of mine told me, but the lab technician that makes the dentures is an actual artist.  They actually sculpt the teeth to get them as natural looking as possible.  The quality of the denture is determined by the skill level of the artist making them.  He graduated from an art school with a degree in mechanical design (or something to that effect).  It is the degree required to produce the special effects seen in movies.  He has fellow artist friends who have jobs working in the field designing dentures in the lab.  I don't know if all dentures are made this way, but this is how mine were done.

Impressions are made by taking a metal tray that will fit inside your mouth comfortably.  The dentist or technician will place the empty tray inside your mouth to see if it is the appropriate size prior to taking the impression.  Then, they will place a substance inside it that is about the consistency of a thick, goopy paste.  It is almost the consistency of Silly Puddy or Play Dough.  It feels very cold and odd inside your mouth.  The dentist or technician will push that tray into your mouth.  You have to keep your mouth as still as possible during this procedure.  Make sure to keep your tongue still as well.  Otherwise you'll have to have it done again.  Might as well be good the first time so they don't have to keep repeating it.  They will repeat this to the bottom of your mouth.  Some people may gag when it is done so movement may not be something you can control.  They can use a spray on the back of your throat to help prevent gagging if it becomes a problem.  I didn't find the process to be too uncomfortable and I didn't gag at any point during the procedure.  They did have to repeat the impressions of my lower teeth 3 times before getting them to my dentists level of perfection.  The top impression was perfect on the first try.

After the impressions were taken, I was able to choose the color of my dentures from the Vita shade guide (shown below).  The shades A1 - D4 are shades of natural teeth.  The shades M1, M2, and M3 are shades of teeth after a professional whitening treatment.  According to my research, you should choose a color that most closely matches the white parts of your eyes.  This is to keep the overall appearance of your face balanced.  Some people don't want to call attention to their teeth so they would prefer that people see their entire face rather than make their teeth the focal point.  My dental technician urged me to go with the shade A1, but I didn't think that was white enough.  I went into this thinking that I was going to get the brightest white that I could find (within normal limits of human teeth).  I wanted to go with shade B1 because it seems whitest to me of the natural shades.  Then, I noticed the M1 shade which is even more white.  My dental technician had a fit.  She kept telling me that these shades were both really white.  She told me that they were going to look a lot more white in my mouth.  I figured that this is an immediate denture so I would go with B1 for now and if I felt it could be more white, then I can always choose M1 for my permanent teeth.

This is the shade chart I was shown in order to make my choice of denture shade

The third appointment was scheduled for February 19, 2015.  This appointment was for a bite registry.  This process is very brief.  The dental technician brought out a piece of dental wax and asked me to bite into it.  This was to determine whether I had a natural overbite or underbite to my teeth.  It is done to ensure that your teeth are lining up properly in your mouth after they are made.  The idea is to match everything up as closely to your natural teeth as possible.  This will ensure that the pressure inside your mouth is more evenly distributed.  

The next appointment I had was the actual extraction date.  So initial consultation, impressions, and bite registry.  Then the extraction date.  I'm not really nervous now, but I imagine as the appointment comes closer that I will become a nervous wreck.  I'm trying to focus on the idea that I will feel better when it is over and I will not have all of the nerve pain in my mouth anymore.

Note:  I wrote this on February 11, 2015.  I did not get it published until February 28, 2015.  The extraction has already been done at this point.  I got a bit behind with the editing portion so I'm posting these daily until I get caught up.

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9:08 AM

My Denture Story

Teeth really aren't something that most people think about.  We all have had them ever since we can remember.  I'm sure everyone has elementary school pictures when they were missing their front teeth.  I remember trying to tie dental floss around my tooth to pull it out because I wanted to catch the tooth fairy when she came.  Most of us don't think any more about our teeth until they are messed up.

I wasn't a kid that was lucky enough to be born with perfectly white or straight teeth.  I had an overbite that was dangerously close to being buck toothed.  I've always had a small gap between my two front teeth on the top.  When I was a kid they looked like they were too big for my mouth.  As I grew up, they eventually looked to be the right size.  That gap became something I was known for.

This is me at age 10 on the right

I don't know that you can really see the gap between my front teeth because the picture is rather old and a bit blurry, but you get the idea that my teeth looked a little goofy back then.

I've always had problems with my teeth beyond just cosmetic issues.  when I was 3 years old I got scarlet fever.  I remember being sick and watching Sesame Street in the living room.  My aunt was there babysitting me and my sister for some reason.  I was eating crackers.  They tell me I had a seizure, but I don't remember that.  I only remember being shoved in a bathtub of cold water and I was not happy about it.  I was taken to the hospital because I had a fever of 104 degrees.  I can understand why that would be alarming to my Aunt.  They gave me a medication to reduce my fever.  It was some form of tetracycline.  It turned my baby teeth to a dark yellowish-brown color.  It made my teeth look as if I had been a smoker for 20 years.  Later on when my secondary (adult) teeth came in, they came in looking like they had grey streaks in them.  It was subtle, but my dentist noticed it and wanted me to get veneers when I was 18.  It also apparently caused my tooth enamel to be more thin than it should have been.  It basically means that my teeth came in weakened which is something that I was completely unaware of as I grew up.  As I said, I didn't think about my teeth much while I was growing up.

My dentist recommended braces when I was 13 years old.  My orthodontist put a dental appliance over the roof of my mouth.  It was attached to the molars that were the furthest back.  They call them 12 year old molars.  It was just a metal bar that went across the roof of my mouth.  It made it difficult for me to talk and made me drool when I first got it, which was kind of gross.  I had a key that came with it.  It was attached to a very long string.  I never was able to say the word "cute" while I had that in.  I had to turn the key every other night before I went to bed.  It was supposed to widen my upper jaw to correct my overbite.  I wore it for 6 months and then I got my braces on.  They stayed on for 4 and a half years.  That was over 4 years of wax because my braces would sometimes dig into my cheek.  I had to wear small rubber bands over various parts in order to correct various areas of my teeth.  I remember having to place a rubber band on the side near my canine teeth for some reason.  Then there was a few months there where I had to put one in a square shape in the front of my mouth while I slept.  By the time I was a sophomore in high school, my braces came off.  I didn't have an overbite anymore and I no longer had a gap.  I had my teeth professionally whitened to help correct the staining.  Shortly after that, I began a career in modeling.

I was a model from the time I was 14 years old until I was around 21 years old.   I spent a lot of time in the spotlight during my childhood.  I performed in theater groups because my father really wanted me to have a career in acting.  I competed in beauty pageants.  Then, I modeled and eventually got a modeling contract.  I opted to give all of that up to get married and have children.  When I say opted, I mean to say that a month after I got engaged to my future husband, I found out I was pregnant with our son.  I had to give up my modeling contract as a result.  It's not anything that I was ever bitter about, it's just how things happened for me.

This is one of my last modeling photos taken when I was 21

I brushed my teeth like I was supposed to and went to the dentist's office once or twice a year to get my teeth cleaned.  I didn't have many cavities; maybe 1.  I had my wisdom teeth out between the ages of 21 - 24.  I didn't have them all out at the same time and I was pregnant with my daughter so we had to wait until after she was born to finish the remaining wisdom teeth.  They weren't impacted, but they also weren't coming through all the way so I had to have them pulled.  The last one was removed when I was 24.  I had my back teeth sealed twice to reduce the formation of cavities.  I had my teeth scaled for the first time when I was 26.  I was too busy running around after my children and let a year or 2 go by without making it to the dentist's office.  It caused tarter to build up around my gum line, which made this necessary.  I had contracted gingivitis and this was the treatment recommended.  I was taught how to properly floss my teeth.

My husband decided to depart from the military and adjusting to civilian life was a larger adjustment than I originally realized.  This clearly affected our dental insurance.  The insurance we got from our civilian jobs was no where near as good as the insurance we had in the military.  In spite of all of these dental visits and care that I put into my teeth, I bit into a jelly bean and one of my teeth crumbled.  My teeth didn't look bad at all, but when the tooth crumbled it revealed heavy decay under the part that had been white.  It seemed like they were decaying from the inside out.  Although, now I can see that what was actually going on is that my gum disease had gotten worse because we couldn't afford the expensive treatments needed to reverse it.  My teeth were forming cavities at the gum line, which allowed decay to spread through the inside of my teeth.  Once that first one crumbled, the one on the other side of my mouth soon followed.  I had to have both of my teeth extracted that were next to my front teeth at the top (I believe they are called lateral incisors).  We tried to have as many of these treatments done, but I lost another tooth in the back about two years later.  Then, one of my canine teeth broke off at the gum line.  Now I have another of my canine teeth that has chipped to a point that is really close to the nerve.  It's causing a lot of pain.  A few weeks ago, I noticed that the glands under my jaw on either side are swollen.

The above image was taken a few weeks before my lateral incisors crumbled to illustrate how white and normal looking my teeth were just moments before they crumbled.

I went to a new dentist in January and he told me that the infection has spread into the socket of all of my teeth on the top.  It's causing decay to develop there which is leading to bone loss.  The teeth have already begun to get lose so it is now necessary for me to have them all removed on the top.  I also have to have 6 of my bottom teeth in the front removed for the same reason.  My 8 bottom molars are allowed to remain because they don't seem to be as effected as the rest of my teeth.  The thing is that I went in to discuss only the possibility of removing my 4 canine teeth and getting partial dentures on the top and bottom to fill in the holes.  So, jumping from discussing the extraction of 4 teeth to now discussing having 18 teeth extracted was a bit of a shock to me.  However, the idea of having a healthy mouth and healthy looking white teeth was extremely attractive to me.  Clearly my mouth is full of infection currently.  Plus it is actually cheaper for me to have these teeth extracted.  I will be able to have an immediate denture placed at the time of the extraction.  I will have to wait a few months after the extraction to be fitted for my lower partial denture.  Then, in six months I will be able to have a permanent denture made.

I have made all the necessary appointments required to get this process started.  It looks like I have 3 weeks between today and the time my teeth are extracted.  I will have to get impressions taken at my next appointment.  So, this is where my blog is going to begin.  I will try to present all of this information as it applies to my experience, but also include the information that I dig up along the way for anyone who may have to face becoming a denture wearer.

This is what I look like today.  Notice I'm not smiling anymore.  The previous picture is the last photo that was taken of me where I actually smiled.  There is a 10 year difference between it and the above photo.

Note:  I did type all of this up on February 4, 2015.  I did not get around to posting it until February 27, 2015 and by this point the process has already been completed.

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2:43 PM

Welcome

Welcome to the Denture Diaries.  Did you know that 99% of the American population will end up with dentures at some point in their lifetime?  True story and  most people believe that this is not going to happen to them.  Let's face it, the majority of people won't think about their teeth until they have dental problems.  In 12 days, I will become one of the 99% of Americans with dentures.  I wanted to get proactive and create a  place where I could share what I have learned about this process with all of you.  I'm not a dental health professional, but I can research things online like a pro.

After I heard the news that I would be getting dentures, I came home and freaked the hell out for a while.  This major freak out involved a really good friend, a lot of beer and a few shots of heavy alcohol.  Then, I decided to research the procedure.  I found that there are more people out there talking about this than I had originally anticipated.  Normally dentures are not something that people talk about.  I decided that if I was sitting here looking up information that would help me to feel better about having to go through this, then maybe at some point in time there will be someone else out there that I might be able to help by sharing my experiences here.

I'm fortunate to have a good support system, but I understand that the first step in any journey is often the hardest to take.  I intend to cover everything I can about my own experiences and any other piece of information that I feel might be helpful.  I'm hoping that if I write about my experiences and you guys reading this write about your experiences then maybe together we can create an informative place for someone to visit that might be looking to take their first step.  Wouldn't it be cool if through this website someone could come here feeling afraid and alone because their teeth are bad, then together we could take them by the hand and lead them through the entire process?  I think that would be one hell of a positive influence to unleash upon the world.  I also think that our world could use more positive things.  I hope you've enjoyed your visit here and I hope that you will consider helping me to create a place of hope for anyone out there who may be feeling as if their whole world just fell apart.

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11:27 PM