adventuresindentures-blog

[adventuresindentures-blog]

Adventures in Dentures

Week One.

A little back story. I’m a 47-year-old man, who has, for all of my adult life, had to deal with soft teeth that were constantly breaking. Eventually it reached a point where nothing more could be done to save them, my mouth was filled with crowns, partial denture plates, gaps and fillings.

So eventually enough was enough and on the advice of my dentist, I’ve had all my upper teeth removed and now have a full plate.

I’m not going to kid you, it was and indeed still is painful, the actual tooth removal wasn’t painful, the only thing I felt was the initial injections, but as soon as the injections wear off, you will feel a lot of pain. The good thing is it's a temporary pain, and will only last a few days to a week at most.

It's been 5 days since I had 14 teeth removed and my full plate fitted, the pain and swelling are starting to die down, and things are beginning to settle. Eating is still hard, not so much eating the actual food as chewing it. My gums still hurt and when the plate presses against it, it hurts, but it's getting better every day.

On day two after extraction, I had a dental appointment to check the fit of my intermediate dentures, it was a Thursday and my dentist didn’t want to leave me till the Monday to see if things were fitting correctly. In reality my temporary dentures were a little too big, and were rubbing against the top of my soft pallet and created a sore on the top of the mouth, this was more painful that my gums after the extraction, and took only a day to form, 3 days after my plate was adjusted it's still very painful, but thankfully my plate no longer rubs against the area and it's now healing.

Another thing I never know that could happen was a piece of bone that used to hold my teeth in place was left with a sharp edge after the extraction and this was rubbing against the inside of my gum, causing it to become sore against the denture, my dentist numbed me up and extracted the bone through the hole left behind from the extraction. As the bone was still attached, the dentist had to do a fair bit of pushing nd pulling to get it to break away from my cheekbone, and as a result, I have more bruising in this area than anywhere else.

But in the main, am I glad I got the work done? You bet I am, for the first time in my entire life I have a straight smile with white teeth and I can smile with confidence. My teeth looked so bad before I avoided photos and never smiled in them, in fact, they looked so awful my wife asked me not to smile in photos as I tended to ruin them if I smiled.

She also told me once, the only thing she would ever change about me would be my teeth. I’m not going to deny it, that hurt a lot, but it spurred me on to go to the dentist, for the first time in years to get the work down.

It’s been a long road of prep work at the dentist to get here, I've had approx 4 sets of impressions taken, loads of X-rays and teeth removed in stages to get to this point, and finally on Tuesday all my top teeth were removed and I started this new chapter in my life.

I've spent a long time learning how to smile, its been 10 years since my teeth looked ok, and now they look great. I learned today that instead of saying cheese in photos, say "Banana" it produces a more natural smile and allows they eyes to smile, making the photos look better.

If you need dentures and your thinking it over, or apprehensive about going ahead with them. Don't. Just do it if you’re like me, you won't regret it for a moment.