Ah, the pleasures of implants - selected size, perfect shape... You can find yourself brazenly showing off more than you would have before, revealing glimpses of your new side, a little more bubbly, a little more cheerful. No one can deny that you've had something done. For some it's a preference, a choice to enhance the appearance; for others a necessity to correct a blatant absence.
For me, I was one of the latter folks. I had a need to fill a lack and all because of a meatball. Yes - a meatball. A moist, flavorful, healthy buffalo meatball. I made the whole batch that fateful night by myself. Knew every ingredient that went in, anitcipated the succulent taste and aromatic smells...everything was to be perfect. And then it happened. First bite in and I felt it on the inside. I heard it within my mouth. A loud CRACK! My jaw uncontrollably sagged open, amongst my daughter's disgusted exclamation of "Ew!".
The next few days I tried desperately to convince myself that it wasn't serious. But finally a trip to the dentist was required. Only that wouldn't be my easy solution, oh no. Then an appointment to an oral surgeon (not my first by any means). But that wasn't to be the quick fix either. Instead of a thirty minute, two-stitch ordeal to remove a broken tooth and replace it with an implant, I woke up 45 minutes later with a corset stitch running up the back of my lower jaw, donor bone to correct a dangerously thinned jawbone, and an implant to screw a new molar on to in the near future. That slight change in expectation should have been my warning flag - that subtle hint to tell me that my life would be inexplicably challenged for years to come over the decision to go with an implant.
The next week, while traveling for the holidays, the cap fell off. Then the following week the surgeon had to burn my gums away where they had grown over in the absence of the healing cap. One year later and I sheered off the side of my first crown. Three months after that saw the breaking of my second. And amidst almost constant visits to various dentists, I was also setting my bite off by accommodating the large space of no teeth in my head.
Flash forward, now several years later and I'm still battling the crown curse. As it turns out, the implant was done impeccably well; the original crown, not so much. So, now I've got the right people on task. Only once we finally got the crown built out of the correct material, it was made too long and didn't fit. Then, it fit (with a little finagling) but wouldn't seat correctly because my gums had grown over the implant site again. So, I found myself once again in the oral surgeon's chair and humoring stitches in my mouth. Then, when the crown could be seated correctly, the screw was stripped and one bite down the next morning, had the fake tooth sliding up and down in my mouth like a hobby horse on the merry-go-round. Lovely. Another weekend spent not chewing on the left side and not biting down (really? how do you eat without biting down?) and I was back in the dentist's chair (a two-hour drive round trip, by the way).
Now, I find myself awaiting another trip to the dentist's office to hopefully conclude my implant crown trials but with one more little surprise venture to overcome while there. It would seem that although we may have put my implant issues to rest, because of the offset to my bite, I've once again cracked a tooth. On the other side.
Who knows? Maybe I'll go with an implant.
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