Not sure if this makes 25 or 26
Without going back through Eleven's archives, I can't remember if I've ever posted about the issues I've had with my teeth. In case I haven't, and to tell the most recent chapter, here's a recap...
As I approached my teens my parents realized I had only lost a couple baby teeth. A few x-rays later, it was discovered most of permanent teeth were in but being held up inside the roots of my baby teeth. The only solution was to pull the babies to make room for the big boys. For the next six or eight months, every few weeks, I had three teeth pulled at a time. The total was supposed to be 24 teeth extracted, but I ended up losing two or three the old fashioned way.
The next step was to correct my improperly shaped upper jaw. So, as it became trendy in the 80's to do, they slapped braces on my teeth. Part of that setup was a wrap-around bracket on my back two, upper molars. Over the next few years, those brackets held an interior wire, outer braces, a separator, and a nasty retainer thing that broke the first week I had it. The end result was an almost pretty smile. Problem was, they never removed the back brackets.
Once into my thirty's I finally had the brackets removed only to find that twenty years of being wrapped in metal and unable to be brushed had caused the teeth to rot. Both teeth were pulled. This summer I broke a tooth doing some sort of rough-housing and had to have it pulled. Coincidentally (or maybe not,) it's the same tooth my Dad and his brother had missing from their mouths as long as I can remember.
When the left side bracket-wrapped tooth was pulled, it opened up room for a wisdom tooth to appear. It came in all funky but wasn't a problem until a few weeks back. Something happened to the tooth and it caused an infection to spread across my upper jaw. The pain that went with that infection was some of the worst pain I've ever had. The easiest way to solve that problem was to have the tooth pulled. I'd already been through it 24 or 25 times, what was one more? So Monday afternoon, bye-bye wisdom tooth and bye-bye pain.
My favorite part of this story is that overall I have very healthy teeth. Besides the fact that my baby teeth were so strong they didn't want to die, I've also never had a cavity in all of my 33 years. Pretty cool for a guy who's had 25 or 26 teeth pulled.
As I approached my teens my parents realized I had only lost a couple baby teeth. A few x-rays later, it was discovered most of permanent teeth were in but being held up inside the roots of my baby teeth. The only solution was to pull the babies to make room for the big boys. For the next six or eight months, every few weeks, I had three teeth pulled at a time. The total was supposed to be 24 teeth extracted, but I ended up losing two or three the old fashioned way.
The next step was to correct my improperly shaped upper jaw. So, as it became trendy in the 80's to do, they slapped braces on my teeth. Part of that setup was a wrap-around bracket on my back two, upper molars. Over the next few years, those brackets held an interior wire, outer braces, a separator, and a nasty retainer thing that broke the first week I had it. The end result was an almost pretty smile. Problem was, they never removed the back brackets.
Once into my thirty's I finally had the brackets removed only to find that twenty years of being wrapped in metal and unable to be brushed had caused the teeth to rot. Both teeth were pulled. This summer I broke a tooth doing some sort of rough-housing and had to have it pulled. Coincidentally (or maybe not,) it's the same tooth my Dad and his brother had missing from their mouths as long as I can remember.
When the left side bracket-wrapped tooth was pulled, it opened up room for a wisdom tooth to appear. It came in all funky but wasn't a problem until a few weeks back. Something happened to the tooth and it caused an infection to spread across my upper jaw. The pain that went with that infection was some of the worst pain I've ever had. The easiest way to solve that problem was to have the tooth pulled. I'd already been through it 24 or 25 times, what was one more? So Monday afternoon, bye-bye wisdom tooth and bye-bye pain.
My favorite part of this story is that overall I have very healthy teeth. Besides the fact that my baby teeth were so strong they didn't want to die, I've also never had a cavity in all of my 33 years. Pretty cool for a guy who's had 25 or 26 teeth pulled.
posted by Sam at 9:33 AM
2 Comments:
Ouch!
Wow. I HATE the dentist. How do you do it?? I've been putting off getting my wisdom teeth out for about 3 years (it doesn't help that I keep getting pregnant which always puts surgeries on hold). Anyway, YIKES!
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