What price beauty?

Okay, I know dentures are necessary to help one chew and speak clearly. I probably spend more time not wearing my upper denture than wearing it (but I don't answer the door, so don't come knocking on the spur of the moment), and it's hard to make myself speak clearly. Soft foods can be tasty.

With last week's extraction of four lower teeth and the immediate insertion of a partial denture, I'm beginning to question whether I want to fit into society again or not. Ever.

My face hurts. All the damned time.

I've been wearing the partial all the time, removing it only to clean it, but after doing a little research, Dr. Google says I only need to wear it to sleep in for the first night. (I thought my dentist said to wear it all the time, but I was in pain and somewhat traumatized that day, so I may have misheard him.)

I'm afraid if I sleep without it, I'll love the feeling of my face not hurting and then I'll never put it back in.

Dentures help you chew food, speak clearly, and look nice. I understand the first two. I really don't want to just eat soft foods the rest of my life. I'm not a hermit; I interact with people other than my husband almost daily.

He's stuck with me every day.

If the Etruscans hadn't developed false teeth in 700 B.C., someone else would have. But looking nice – normal – really is an arbitrary thing. The norm is to have teeth. Comedians make jokes about the toothless. If you don't have teeth, you're automatically thought of as poor, uneducated, malnourished, or a hillbilly … you've heard it. You might have thought it, or even said it.

My tooth and bone loss is genetic. My guess is a lot of people who wear dentures had good dental hygiene and were destined to lose their teeth no matter what.

Had dentures not been invented, would we automatically think less of those who no longer have their natural teeth? We don't think less of those who wear glasses. Vision loss – like tooth loss – is a function of aging.

I don't want to put dental clinics out of business. Really. I'm just thinking out loud and nursing a perpetual headache. Or face ache.

Be kind. Especially to the toothless.

Meltdown and fail

Major, major meltdown the last couple of days. I haven't done anything to create success with my intentions.

I'm going to the dentist today to have four extractions and get a partial denture where my lower front teeth used to be.

And I am freaking out about it.

Being an emotional eater, I'm eating whatever I want. I'm not walking or reading, either.

SO …

Whole 30 fail.
Mileage fail.
Reading fail.
Writing fail.

I don't even remember if there were other goals, but here we are, three weeks in the new year and none of the habits stuck.

And I don't really care this morning.

BECAUSE I AM FREAKING OUT.

It's not like I haven't had extractions before. I have a full upper denture. And it drives me crazy and I hate wearing it and now I'm going to have both jaws compromised.

I hate getting old.

Be kind.

Smile!

Well, I thought the new, ahem, "appliance" was going to come today, but it arrived yesterday instead. I kept my walking date, but we only went three miles so I would still have time to make it to the dentist's office before they closed for the day.

The new denture fits well without adhesive and looks great. The photo shows all three attempts at making me look less like a toothless old redneck. The top one is the original, which looked all right when I smiled but looked very fake and unnatural when my mouth was at rest.

The center image is the original piece after it had been relined. Too much gum and it fit horribly. I couldn't wear it for more than a couple hours without getting a massive headache.

The lower photo is the brand-new one that just came. I had to use lots of adhesive with the previous pieces, but this one fits well without it and I expect, as I get used to it, will continue to lock into place, just as the doctor has promised it would all along.

I guess you have to start with a good fit first, though. I still have a bit of a gagging/choking feeling, but nothing like I did to begin with. He gave me some spray anesthetic (cherry-flavored!) to help that issue.

I'm not sure why the first one wasn't right, but there's no denying it wasn't. And now, a full EIGHT MONTHS and $1200-plus later, I can get on with my life without focusing every damned day on my teeth. (He didn't charge a dime for the second denture. I was astonished, but I guess sometimes it takes a couple attempts to get it right and they build that into the original cost.)

And guess what? SO CAN YOU! Heh.

The denture adventure continues

I'm so, so proud of myself.

Yesterday's tiny gain could have sent me right straight to McDonald's for something fried and fat or to Tiny Kroger for a delicious bakery creation for breakfast yesterday. I didn't eat breakfast before I went to the dentist, which is unusual, and maybe it was in the back of my mind that I'd grab something fast and yummy between the dentist and the oil change appointments. But I didn't. I'm not sure if skipping breakfast is better than eating something yummy, but I chose to skip.

The dentist appointment went great. HAD IT NOT, you can bet I would have been diving for doughnuts. But this try-in was perfect and looks good, better than I ever expected.

For anyone out there who may not know, I've been on an upper denture adventure since last June. I went in yesterday for the second third try-in. We're starting from scratch. Again. (I had two try-ins with the first set of dentures and they STILL didn't work.)

Here's what happens at my dentist's when your natural teeth fall out and you have to get replacements (some practitioners do immediate dentures, mine doesn't):

• The dentist extracts any remaining natural teeth.
• You go home and hide for six to eight weeks. BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO UPPER TEETH.
• After complete healing of your gums, you go back to the office to have an impression made.
• You go back again a few days later to have a bite impression made. 
• The dentist sends the impressions off to a lab where they make a fake set of dentures out of wax.
• You go back again to try out the wax model. If it looks good and feels good and fits well, then …
• The dentist sends it back to the lab for the real deal to be made.

When you live in the Middle of Nowhere, each step in the process takes about a week, after the healing period. The dental lab is two hours away by car, but two DAYS away by UPS. So, two days to deliver, a day or two to make, two days to return.

When I found out yesterday the lab was only two hours away, I volunteered to take the wax model to the lab myself, to save some time. We're going away this weekend and by making the four-hour round-trip drive yesterday, I will have have the new appliance Thursday. Instead of next Monday.

You don't know how I dreaded meeting up with our friends and eating in restaurants with the current set of upper dentures. They look HORRIBLE and they fit badly and they give me a headache and I can't eat with them. I envisioned a weekend from hell, truly.

My dentist was happy and I was happy and I left his office with my future happiness tucked in a little box. I still had to get the oil changed, so I left the car and called my husband and TOOK A WALK. It was only about 22 degrees, but I had a little excess energy I needed to get rid of. My husband came to town, left his car and went with me to the big city of Dunbar, WV.

We dropped the box off, were triply assured that it would be back at my dentist's office Thursday and went to lunch. At a Chinese buffet. Probably not the best choice, but when we do that we don't eat dinner. And it was Monday, my "free" day, the one day of the week when I give myself permission to exceed the calorie limit and not exercise. (By my estimate, I didn't even exceed the calorie limit. Yay, me!)

We made it back to Summers County by mid-afternoon, I dropped him off at his car and then … are you ready? … I took ANOTHER walk. It was warm and pretty and I wasn't about to waste a nice day. Combined with the morning walk I ended up logging 4.33 miles in an hour and 22 minutes. A pretty good pace, all in all.

I'm hoping to wrap this adventure up Friday morning and never speak of it again. And if it makes you squirmy that I'm speaking of it now, I apologize. I would have loved to have found someone's personal experience with the process to read as I was going through it, and that's the reason I'm spending so much time on it. My dental problems are the result of genetic bone loss, not poor hygiene, but people tend to assume that if you have dentures you never brushed your teeth. NOT TRUE! Sometimes it's just one of those expensive, painful, frustrating, almost never-ending life situations that happens.

And you've just finished reading a rather long PSA. Thanks for your patience. I hope I've helped. Heh.

Round Two

It's better to look good than to feel good.

Fernando Lamas

I was sadly mistaken in thinking that once I actually got dentures, my dental problems would be over.

Oh, no, no, NO, that is not the case at all.

Everything I've read online, everything the dentist told me and everything my Amish neighbors have shared assures me that I will get used to them. I hope they're all right.

It's been less than 24 hours so far, so I suppose I should give it a chance, right? I really don't have a choice.

I'm writing all this for me, more than for you, although I figure someone out there might appreciate an account of the personal experience. You might need to go through this someday – you could get your teeth knocked out in a softball game, for instance – and I feel like I'm doing a public service.

Also, I can't not go through something like this and not write about it. I guess after all these years I've evolved into some kind of diarist.

I feel like I'm gagging all the time. Just as I've read online, there is in increase in salivation and it's extremely uncomfortable. I will say, though, that it's easier today than it was yesterday.

I can't talk very well, and I haven't been able to eat much at all. I had really looked forward to having a salad, but raw vegetables are still too difficult to handle. I'm going to try pizza tonight, though, making sure the crust is more breadlike than crispy.

Anyway, that's the news of the day from that old lady who lives in the Middle of Nowhere. I can just hear both of you saying, "Thanks for sharing." Heh.

P.S. Round Two of the apple jelly turned out great! Probably won't be eating PB&Js for a while, though.

Oh, the trauma

Okay, I'm awfulizing, but yesterday was horrible!

Not the part where you left comments pointing me to your favorite blogs. (And thanks, Denise, for your very kind words about mine, that was a treat to read in an otherwise helluva day.)

The Great Denture Adventure continues. Yesterday I actually got to try the fit of the new appliance. Five minutes later I was in tears. And I was still in tears half an hour later when I got home. And … well, you get the idea.

If your genetics have already predisposed you to eventually needing dentures, do everything you can right now to overcome it. I'm sure I could have done more, but seriously, I've known this day was coming for a long time. Probably since my first visit to a periodontist more than 25 years ago.

Suffice it to say the fit was so not right that the dentist had to take another bite impression and we're tacking an extra week onto the whole process. I get another "try-in" next week and then they'll make the permanent plate.

That is, if it fits right.

According to Dr. Google, DDS, it can take months to get used to having a football in your mouth. I realize millions of denture wearers have become accustomed to them, and I'll give it the old college try, I really will.

But I was ready yesterday to decimate my retirement account in order to pay for waaaaaay more expensive implants. Even knowing that because of the severe bone loss I've suffered I'm not a good candidate for those, either.

I wish I could be just like Scarlett and "think about it tomorrow." But seriously? All I can think about is what a pain in the ass roof of the mouth this has been, is and will continue to be.