Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.

[insomniac7809]

@Packrat I got by on good genes and good luck.

And, yes, an enormous head that can handle wisdom teeth without incident.

[surreality]

@Packrat It isn't even sugar, not scrubbing them to death, or anything like that. (I'm a salty snacks person anyway.)

It's genetic. Weak enamel. The glue from having braces ripped the fronts off almost all of my teeth when they were removed. The front six have had porcelain veneers since I was about 19 because of it; they had to replace the entire front face of each tooth. My mother has the same problem, and her mother before her, but neither ever had braces, so their issues developed more slowly. My grandmother had full dentures by the time she was my age, though, since the options for what they could do to fix shit weren't as good.

(Also drinking tons of black coffee all day, which is super acidic, doesn't help. But I didn't do that as a teen when the disaster began.)

[Auspice]

My teeth were great... then the strugglebus began and I had one really bad experience with a tooth having to be removed. I need to go back to the dentist because I know I have another bad tooth, but that one was so bad that I just end up with such horrifying anxiety that I'll make an appointment, then cancel it.

Sometimes, yes, it is bad oral hygiene. And sometimes it is genetics.

[Too Old For This]

Yeah, I have brushed my teeth at least once a day every day since I was old enough to know how. I've still had a crown, two extractions, and 8 fillings. My son, despite being 15 and going to the dentist every year and brushing his teeth regularly, has also had four fillings. Sometimes you just get the shit end of the stick.

[Quinn]

When I was young, but old enough to have newly permanent teeth, my dad took me to a mall dentist who filled almost every single one of my teeth. Badly. Sometimes multiple times. I think I had 14 fillings in three months and would have ended up with more, but one Saturday that dentist was out and the second guy looked at the x-rays where I was supposed to get FIVE more fillings and said "Those aren't cavities, they're just dark spots in her teeth where they're still forming, I'm not going to fill those." We never went back but the damage was done.

Over the years those fillings either fell out, cracked the teeth they were in, or there was a cavity there...that was still there under the filling.

When I was in college I needed a root canal. My usual dentist was out and my dad's insurance routinely would refuse service every time I went for dental work until I faxed them something saying I was still a student, honestly, seriously guys. But the dentist in that day hollowed out my tooth then said my insurance declined the rest and if I didn't fork up teh $700 right then I'd have to go. I was 19 and poor as shit. I left.

Two days later the hollowed out tooth that had a piece of gauze in it shattered. I had to have gum surgery to even get enough tooth to put a crown on it.

That tooth would be my first implant! I have a dentist I love now, but holy shit are my teeth fucked up. Thankfully the front eight are still fine, but I'm not even sure if I have any actual molars left. Most of them are crowns. I broke a tooth over the weekend and spent three hours getting a crown put in yesterday. Thankfully I have very good dental insurance, but that still cost $500 out of pocket.

tldr; fuck bad dentists. At least I never needed braces! I have nice, straight teeth.

I would have rather had braces.

[surreality]

Yeah, it weirds out the hygenist when she does cleanings. It took her a moment to realize that most of the 'issues' were staining from coffee. Then she realized there was a weirdly low amount of tartar buildup, and the lightbulb finally went on.

Dentist: "It has to be soda, you'd have to drink a whole pot of coffee a day to-"
Me: "It's usually two."
Dentist: "Cups of coffee? See, that would never do it."
Me: "No, pots of coffee."
Dentist: "Oh. Well, yeah."

[Kanye Qwest]

this thread is now giving me intense anxiety holy shit

I just, like a year ago, found a dentist. I never went to one in my adult life before. But my dentist is wonderful and soft spoken and understands I am terrified and he is worth his tiny weight in gold

[Quinn]

Did I mention I'm one of those rare people that has a hard time with anesthetic working? So I got to have novocaine shots three times for the max amount I could possibly have.

And then still they had to avoid one area of my tooth.

Ask me about my first c-section and the doctors not believing me when I said "I can feel that!"

[Auspice]

@Quinn said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

Did I mention I'm one of those rare people that has a hard time with anesthetic working? So I got to have novocaine shots three times for the max amount I could possibly have.

And then still they had to avoid one area of my tooth.

Ask me about my first c-section and the doctors not believing me when I said "I can feel that!"

I am in this same boat. There's a gene that goes along with the gene that gives red hair that apparently makes you more likely to be immune to anesthetics and pain killers.

I discovered it when I had to have a baby tooth pulled when I was 12. They gave me the max dose, shrugged, decided I was 'just being a baby' and went for it anyway.

Thankfully now I'm a goddamn adult and they have to listen. It does mean I need, for dental work, to get my jaw 'blocked' instead, but yeah. Shit sucks. I am legit jealous of those for which novocaine, lidocaine, etc. works for. But it just adds to my severe dental anxiety.

[surreality]

@Kanye-Qwest If you were local, I would give you the info for my good dentist, fwiw.

He and his son are very good... they're just too expensive for us to see as often as we need to. (The dad of the pair is actually so good I was 12 before I realized there were any needles involved, to give you some idea. I just thought, 'oh, maybe I just never needed that... ' -- nope, I just didn't even feel it. That's REALLY good.)

Even with the fuckup sending records over, the person they referred us to was very good at what he was doing, and was 1/3 the price the dad/son would have charged us for the extraction.

[mietze]

@Quinn I made my ob actually screech when I wiggled my toes at her right before she was going to start the surgery. (I had to think about doing it, but didnt feel anything at all otherwise.) I've never seen an anesthesiologist jump so fast off that little barstool thing they sit on so fast. It was 5 am, I was finally free of pain and feeling after 20 hours of unmedicated back labor, a girl's gotta have some fun right?

[Cobalt]

This insomnia can fuck right off.

[surreality]

Well, that escalated quickly.

$1800 crown, not happening. Because the tooth shattered this morning.

They can't even put a temporary patch on it.

The Serious Talk has been had about full replacement implants at this point.

The terrifying reality: that will be the substantially cheaper and more effective option in the long term, and ensure I am able to actually eat for the remainder of my life, with no later need for dental work after it's done again. (I give none fucks about the 'looks nicer' factor.)

The doubly terrifying reality: the ballpark estimate for cost is $4k more than we earn in a year before taxes.

FML.

[Sparks]

@surreality yikes. Set up a GoFundMe or ChipIn, maybe?

[surreality]

@Sparks Depending on how the financing talks come out, I might have to. I am really reluctant to do that, though. Outside family and spouse, I have an impossible time asking people for money.

We'll have a better idea after the consult, which ideally will be Tuesday. They have to check the bone structure in my jaw and everything first to make sure it's all intact enough that they'll be able to do this at all, which has me anxious. They'll be able to give us a more specific full estimate then, as well.

[Packrat]

Dentistry here in the UK is I understand pretty different from in the US. Nobody gets braces unless they have seriously out of alignment teeth, I think maybe it was one in ten or one in fifteen people when I was at school? Tooth whitening or similar is barely a thing. Dental care is also... Sort of half NHS? If you can actually get assigned to an NHS dentist then you pay for checkups and similar but major work is heavily subsidized, this is hugely dependent upon where you live though because there is no guarantee you can actually find an NHS dentist.

The general result though is that on average UK people have worse looking but healthier teeth than US people and it is a whole lot cheaper on average. Apparently in the 70s dentists were paid entirely off the amount of work they did though and they were notorious for drilling everything, my father's teeth are shattered husks full of fillings because of over enthusiastic and not very competent dentists.

[RnMissionRun]

I never saw a dentist the entire time I was growing up, and I had no reason to. My teeth were fine until I moved out of my parent's house and started feeding myself regularly. Thanks to a regular diet of soda (which I never had growing up) and ultra-processed fast food crap (again, which I never had while growing up), I ended up with 3 fillings and a crown before I was 30 It really doesn't matter how often you brush and floss when your diet is horrible, your teeth are going to suffer.

I cook at home a lot more now and I try to avoid soda (I sometimes treat myself to a diet Dr Pepper because it's the awesomest soda over), sugar and stuff. It seems to be working because I haven't had a problem in a while (except for a filling that came out).

[surreality]

@RnMissionRun Again, seriously, this is not all about diet and even then it's not just sugar that's a problem.

My father has never had a cavity in his life. He has perfect teeth at 77 years old. He has no crowns, no missing teeth.

He lives on ice cream and soda, which -- while it's sometimes (about half and half) diet soda -- has acids that do substantially more harm to teeth than the sugar in soda does. (There is a reason that if you drop a corroded penny into a cup of soda, within hours it will be shiny clean like new. That isn't sugar.)

He has no problems. Never has. Motherfucker was the guy from Unbreakable until he hit 70, no joke. (Still has never broken a bone, teeth are still perfect. Needed knee replacements finally.)

I drink black coffee all day. No sugar (but high acid content). If anything goes in the coffee, it's half&half when we have it. Salty snacks, avoid sugar. I don't even like sweet foods for the most part. I even take calcium supplements and use special enamel strengthening rinses and so on -- and it does not fucking matter. My mother is the same way.

Seriously, this is a little offensive; please drop this assertion that it has to be a shitty diet. It's not. It can be, but that is absolutely not the problem here.

[mietze]

I have great enamel as does my hubby. Apparently all three teens have also inherited this (though I worry a little. I got great and regular dental care until I was 18 through the government/military, hubby did because his dad is a dentist. My kids we have paid for their cars out of pocket but there have been some delays/skips because of cost. There hasn't been an issue though yet).

My diet consists of a lot of "bad" along with the good, hubby the same thing. I am in my mid 40s, he is in his 50s and each of us has had one superficial cavity in our 20s.

Meanwhile my mother who also benefitted from govt/military dental care from her childhood until now cannot look at a hard candy without getting a cavity and has had a lot of teeth pullef/replaced with implants and the like at this point due to rotten teeth.

I am pretty sure most people operate between those two extremes but it really can just be about genetic strength of your enamel.

[Arkandel]

@mietze said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

I am pretty sure most people operate between those two extremes but it really can just be about genetic strength of your enamel.

Yeah, it seems to be a genetic lottery thing. I had terrible oral hygiene when I was young and dumb, but even though I've got good habits these days I didn't have to pay for the sins of my past. My teeth are pretty healthy.

On the other hand I have friends who've been flossing and brushing twice a day since they were toddlers who might as well have their dentist on quick dial, which is so frustrating for them.