Smile right through those teeth

[sheffrik]

I thought I'd shift my post from Smile Makeovers to here, as the nature of it has changed a little.

here's what I originally wrote anyway:

Hi,

So I’ve got gaps between my 4 front, upper teeth. I’ve always had them, my brother and sister have them too, but they also have much smaller mouths than me so their gaps are nearly non-existent and barely noticeable.

I’ve spoken to a cosmetic dentist about closing these gaps in the past, but the cost has put me off. I’m very eager to get this sorted out as it’s killing my self confidence and stopping me from smiling.

usually Veneers would be enough to close the gaps, I would require 4, one on each of the teeth (that are too small for my mouth apparently) the problem with this is that the proportions of my teeth would be way off, giving them the appearance of being short and stubby, so to couple this procedure a gum-lift has been recommended, I have a particularly gummy smile too, so this would fit nicely. However my top and bottom teeth also dont interlock (I forget the term, sorry) this means my canines are all worn down, and because they’d be sat next to 4 perfect teeth, these too would need work so that they’d fit in with my smile properly, crowns have been suggested for this.

All this work is well and good, but the cost is coming in at around £4000, which is a little bit of a hindrance for me.

any advice you can provide would be greatly helpful and appreciated.

Thanks

I've decided to go ahead with all this work, despite costs.

at the moment I've had a cast of my teeth done and the dentist is going to carry out the work to see what's actually possible. I'm going in tomorrow to see what my new teeth will look like,

I'm very excited

[sheffrik]

I'll add a couple of before photies to the thread, when I get home later. then you can have a disgusting visual diary of each stage of the process

here ya go, a before picture:

http://img190.imageshack.us/i/beforet.jpg

[sheffrik]

today, then dentist and I had some fun with moulds

this is kinda what my teeth should end up like:

Mould test 1
Mould test 2
Mould test 3

they of course look amazingly fake, but that's because they're lil' bits of plastic stuck in my good ol' gob

[sheffrik]

Oh I did forget to mention that my dentist said I should consider having my teeth whitened beforehand. Now I'm not too sure about this, I've never really been interested in the whitening aspect of faux teeth, I'd rather they just look like nice real teeth, instead of people thinking "ooo he's got good veneers". I'm a little torn with this as if I didn't get it done, I'd not really ever be able to.

ideas?

[sheffrik]

Today was my first real appointment that has a big impact... I had my gum lift.

It was far less uncomfortable and painful than I'd expected it to be (just a tip, don't google for videos before going for an op)

I'm now about 6 hours post op and feeling absolutely fine (we'll see how tomorrow goes), teeth hurt a little when I bite, but that's all. Picture is below, my lip is still swollen and you can only see some of the stitches, you should get the idea of an hour's worth of drilling, scraping and sewing though.

6 hours after gum lift op

[sheffrik]

I recovered nicely from the gum lift, very minimal discomfort and far less than I was expecting in total. The stitches had mostly fallen out by 2 weeks post op, my dentist removed any remaining ones a week later. The only problems I had were biting down on certain foods (you soon learn to use the rest of your teeth for eating) and brushing my teeth, but as long as I was careful and used a soft brush, that was manageable too.

This week I'm due to go in to have my teeth prepped and mould taken for the crowns and veneers. As far as I understand it this will involve a bunch of injections to numb me and make sure I've got a substantial drooling issue for a few hours afterwards (which should make the afternoon's mocking in the office even more fun) then my 6 affected teeth will be ground down, ready to be fitted on my next visit. A mould will then be taken of my shaved teeth, which can be send to the technician for the crowns and veneers to be built around. this process takes around 3 weeks, I'm told. Of course this leaves me with the problem of having little stubby shaved down teeth for 3 weeks, I'm lead to believe the solution to this is to fit temporary ones. They will be a plastic cast of my proposed new smile, I can only presume the dentist will attach these somehow so that I can live life relatively normally till my new teeth are finished.

So after this visit I should aesthetically look almost identical to the final fitting. This will mean I inherit a couple of new speech impediments for a couple of weeks and people can start looking at me with that "have you done something different with your hair today?" face, followed by the (hopefully rather small amounts of) mocking from everyone and anyone who didn't realise I had a problem with my smile in the first place... well I will live in Yorkshire, if you're not mocked here, you're not loved.

I'll post you all a picture later of my current smile, with it's lack of stitches and swelling, but with a raised gum line. Then you can all sit eagerly waiting for my next installment later in the week, I'll be able to provide a few more details of what happened and pictures of my temporaries by then

[sheffrik]

Awww, how cruel am I?! making you wait all this time before getting this getting this ever-so-gripping episode. I'm Sorry... I plan to compensate you with details and photographs.

My previous appointment went pretty much as I expected, a few little tweaks here and there, but otherwise no surprises. My teeth were shaved down and some temporary, plastic ones crafted and glued to them. A mould was not taken during all this, which surprised me a little, but the dentist told me that he wanted to be sure everything went healed alright and was comfortable, before he took that.

So now, let's talk temporary teeth. They're weeeeeird!! It's like you're permanently biting something that you can't take out of your mouth. I'm starting to get used to them now (on day 14) but I'm still very aware they're there. I've been told to avoid hard and tough foods (boiled sweets, beef jerky, etc) and apples, I enjoyed the irony of a dentist telling me that. I've had to learn where I can bite down to again, that doesn't take too long once you've had a quick chomp on your tongue though.

What I really didn't expect was the loss of feeling, I mean if I'd have thought about it properly, it would have made complete sense, but it was just something that never occurred to me. When I first started eating with the temporary teeth, I noticed that I could no longer feel the texture and temperature of food, it was a very unusual sensation, an odd sense to be without. A couple of weeks later and I'm starting to feel again, but I dont know if it's just me getting used to the feeling not being there or if my body is compensating and making my teeth more sensitive beneath the temporaries. I think the porcelain veneers should be better at conduction the feelings anyway, they'll be far less absorbent

The colour of the temporary teeth almost identically matches my own, but the plastic they're made of doesn't have the same shine as my natural teeth do, as a result the temporaries look duller and are lacking the sparkle I was hoping for. Again I should think the veneers wont have this problem, but I'll be mentioning it to the dentist fella tomorrow when I go in for a check up.

anyway, on to the good stuff... they look damn awesome I'm ridiculously happy with them. Mockery from people I know has been sparse and minimal, which is shockingly rare for them all, but even more of an endangered reaction are compliments and they've been just rolling in so yeah... I've gotta say that I'm loving the feedback from people. I've spent a little time working out how to smile again, that's paying off nicely too. A lot more people smile back at you when you smile at them in the first place and now all I wanna do is show this grin off. I walk around thinking "hey there pretty girl, check out this smile... in fact why the hell not, why don't you all check it out. Hey. Hey. Hey". I know not to expect miracle from a slight change, but the confidence it's giving me is great. It didn't all come at once, but it's building day by day with the more people I see. It's an exhilarating new experience.

As I mentioned I'm due to see the dentist again tomorrow. I intend to report all good for the go ahead and hope he can fit me in before I go away this year (I doubt it though, he's difficult to get a long appointment with and I go away on the 23rd) if he can't I'll be stuck with temporaries till mid-September, I hope the glue lasts. I've also got to bring up costs with him. I was initially quoted around £4500, I've currently paid £2300 and we haven't even got to the pricey stuff yet, I'm feeling there's a few hidden charges buried in there somewhere, I'm sure he'll clear it all up for me.

yet again, I'm stuck cameraless at this point. I have taken pictures for my previous post and will take some for this one too (you might even get some of my smile in action actually, as I went to a wedding last weekend) I hope to get them up here as soon as possible, so keep your eyes pealed for them