11h ago

I had dental surgery

Resorption in a front tooth. Had it extracted and now there's a fancy titanium drywall anchor grafted into my skull. A few weeks of healing and then I'll have a false tooth bolted in.

5 comments

can people see your stud when you smile?
- ~~People see a stud no matter what expression I'm wearing~~
  For a few different reasons, no.
  I have a temporary flipper to fill the gap. Looks remarkably good, though it's not especially comfortable.
  it's not standing very proud of the gums, especially in front. In fact I think the front of my gums are healing over the cap. The surgeon was concerned about gum recession so he apparently did quite a job retaining as much meat up there as possible; he was talking about even transplanting some tissue from the roof of my mouth forward but I don't think he did. It is visible from below or if I tilt my head back though.

- I do. My remaining real teeth are in excellent health, no cavities, no fillings. This tooth basically ate itself from the inside out because cosmic rays flipped a register on the CPU. I asked my dentist how to prevent this and his reply was "You don't." We do not have a testable hypothesis as to why my tooth hollowed itself out. A little over a year ago, a routine X-ray showed a little shadow in that tooth so I was told to be careful biting into apples and such. This December we took another X-ray and again they mentioned how dark it was, I said "Yeah since last time I've been careful when biting into apples and carrots" and the hygienist said "NOPE! None of that anymore!" I've been on a no biting things diet for a couple months now, eating pizza with a knife and fork, and I've been eating soup, oatmeal and Slimfast for a week now and I want a fucking steak.
- Resorption (sometimes? always?) happens for reasons unrelated to tooth brushing, plaque, tooth decay, etc. I had a tooth extracted a year ago to the day (yes, on Valentines day) that my dentist assured me was not due to decay and had nothing to do with how often I brushed my teeth.
  COVID can do it. Physical trauma can do it. And it can happen idiopathically.
  To be clear, it's sound advice to brush your teeth regularly. But you won't necessarily prevent what happened to OP's tooth (or mine) by brushing, flossing, or any other particular oral hygeine regimen.
  
  idiopathically
  I gotta figure out how to use that word as an insult.
  fwiw I've found it's also important to have regular checkups. A couple years back I had to skip several dental checkups and I thought I'd be OK bc I flossed and brushed regularly but turns out I was missing a spot and by the time I was able to get a checkup again it was too late and I needed all kinds of work done on this one tooth.