Getting full dentures in December

ryanjoachim

Anyone around here have experience with dentures? With my new job they are covered 100%, and I desperately need them, so I'm biting the bullet.

Any tips/suggestions?

jimmydep

The only advice I can give you is....Don't flush them down the toilet, you'll loose your teeth and clog the bowl too.


Good Luck

Jimmy

ryanjoachim

I've had a hard time finding out what foods I absolutely won't be able to eat...

Also, i'm thinking of having them implanted (they attach supports to your jaw bone and your upper pallat and secure the dentures to the supports). I'll wait a while on that though.

mark090852

ryanjoachim wrote: »

I've had a hard time finding out what foods I absolutely won't be able to eat...

Also, i'm thinking of having them implanted (they attach supports to your jaw bone and your upper pallat and secure the dentures to the supports). I'll wait a while on that though.

I don't think you should concern yourself with what foods you "absolutely" won't be able to eat. As the weeks and months go by you will probably find that you will gradually be able to eat more and more things. Take your time...don't get discouraged or give up. If you wear them in your pocket you'll never get used to them. Good luck.

Disclaimer:
I've never stayed in a Holiday Inn Express but I am a dentist.

Fongolio

I've worn a top plate for 15 years. My teeth were a mess even as a kid. Growing in all directions, some double rows, non stop trouble so I got em yanked and got a full top plate. Best thing I ever did (well, short of nailing Sandra when I was 16). It takes a while to adjust but I can eat anything. Apples, peanuts, corn etc. Nothing I can't eat. The key is to leave them in as long as you can. Get used to them. It'll feel weird at first but you WILL get used to them. The next thing is fit. A good denturist can make it fit so well you have to pull to take it out. Suction (vacuum) should hold it in place. If you need poly-grip they don't fit right. Lastly, clean them and where them to bed. If you take them out every night you gums will very slowly with time recede and they won't fit well in a year or two. Leaving them in helps prevent the gums from receding. Good luck. In a few months you'll be glad you did it.

Ron-P

I'd love to have all mine pulled and replaced with dentures. No more visits to the dentist, no more fillings, no more cleanings, etc.

ryanjoachim

Thanks for sharing your experience Fongolio. I've had terrible teeth ever since I was a kid (runs in the family). Right now the dentist says he could possibly save 6 teeth, with multiple root canals/bridges/etc. I told him I'm not going through that much pain/BS for 6 teeth.

I'm really young to be getting dentures (26)...but there is never more than an hour or 2 that goes by before I have a massive toothache. From what i've heard the lower plate never sits quite right, no matter how hard they try, so pastes/bonds are almost a necessity there.

I just can't wait to be able to eat cereal without being in pain for a couple hours from the chewing and the cold, or be able to eat ice cream from a freaking ice cream CONE. It's the little things that you don't think about that you end up missing the most.

vc69

Ditto on everything said so far. Been wearing a top plate for 5 years.

janmike

Think of what it will do to improve your appearance. Nothing worse than bad teeth. Your self-confidence will increase and you will smile more than ever. Good luck.

potee

I'm 69 years old and have had false teeth since I was 18. You can eat any thing you want you just have to rinse more with some foods. If you have them relined a couple of months after they seat in your good to go. Good Luck

Paul

cfrizz

Keiko, you are very lucky. I've been where you were and I can tell you right now, don't EVER get a root canal. Pull the damn tooth & get an implant. Root canals FAIL & you can go through YEARS of suffering only to end up losing the tooth anyway. And with all of that suffering & mutiple surgeries they are taking infected BONE that could be used for an implant!

Dentists will tell you that they are trained to save your natural teeth. What they don't tell you is that sooner or later the teeth are going to end up being pulled, because what they do is usually just a temporary fix.

ryanjoachim

Yeah, I've been through a few root canals and they are ridiculously useless and overly painful.

My wife just had one done, and her tooth hurt for 3 days straight so far. The dentist said "you have to wait 4 weeks before we can decide if something went wrong with the root canal".

I'm well aware that dentures are a big life-change, but i'm hoping it'll make my life a lot better.

Monster Jam

ryanjoachim wrote: »

Anyone around here have experience with dentures? With my new job they are covered 100%, and I desperately need them, so I'm biting the bullet.

Any tips/suggestions?

My 2 cents? DON'T BITE THE BULLET!

(good luck!)

Airplay355

What kind of dentists are you guys going to? My dentist did a root canal in a few hours and only needed to use novocaine (didn't even feel the needle). She was so good at it I took a little nap in the dentist chair while she did things. All I had to do was go back to get the permanent cap placed on.

cfrizz

That's what I'm telling you Keiko. I suffered on and off for over 30 years with the root canal, when I was a kid, then 3 surgeries when the root canal failed in my early 20's (the bone was infected since I DIDN'T have any root left!) then a few years later I had to get both pulled a year apart starting in 2003.

I had to get bone grafts BEFORE I could get implants. If I had known then what I know now I would have had the teeth pulled when the root canals first failed in the 80's!

Mike, You have NO ROOT LEFT! What got infected was your BONE!!!! Pull it NOW & get an implant!

mark090852

cfrizz wrote: »

That's what I'm telling you Keiko. I suffered on and off for over 30 years with the root canal, when I was a kid, then 3 surgeries when the root canal failed in my early 20's (the bone was infected since I DIDN'T have any root left!) then a few years later I had to get both pulled a year apart starting in 2003.

I had to get bone grafts BEFORE I could get implants. If I had known then what I know now I would have had the teeth pulled when the root canals first failed in the 80's!

Mike, You have NO ROOT LEFT! What got infected was your BONE!!!! Pull it NOW & get an implant!

Just for clarification, root canal treatment does not remove the root. It just removes the nerve tissue etc. from the canal in the root. You DO have a root. When a root canal treatment fails and becomes infected the pain and infection is around the root, in the bone, but you do still have the root.

Also, root canal treatment is successful approximately 95% to 97% of the time. There are millions and millions of teeth that have been saved and functioned without pain for years and years. You hear about the failures...the successes are the silent majority. Can root canal treatment fail? Yes. Do they usually or eventually fail? No.

I don't want to start a public debate here on this forum but I would be glad to discuss it further via PM if anyone has more questions.

cfrizz

No offense Dr., but the fact remains that whatever root that is left to get infected is buried in with the bone and to remove the infection you also have to remove the bone with it. Which makes getting an implant a lot more difficult & a lot more expensive.

My root canals were a success too right up until the time that they failed 20-30 years later! I don't count that as a success since I had to go through HELL all those years later to fix something that I thought and was told WAS fixed!

All the money I spent fixing the failed root canals, I could have saved time & money & pain by having them pulled then & getting implants.

Jstas

I had a root canal when I was 10. It failed because I busted up my tooth again. Had another one when I was 11. The dentist did it in stages and required about 8 visits. It sucked like nothing has ever sucked before in regards to medical procedures I had to have done. But, I still have the tooth in my head and relatively pain free for years. Extreme temps bother it but i was told to expect that at times.

I need to get back to the dentist though because the cap on the back is starting to chip again. That takes about 20 minutes to fix. I really should just go back to the dentist anyway. Haven't been in several years since my last job changed insurance and my dentist didn't accept the new insurance. I was paying cash out of pocket just to keep going to the same guy but it got too expensive so I just stopped going. Different insurance again though so I gotta see if he's on the list.

But I'm a veteran of the dentist's chair what with braces, root canals, chipped teeth and other superhappyfuntime stuff going on the dentist doesn't scare me. The last dentist I had to go to said I was remarkably calm and collected and I was a better assistant than his assisstant. If only he knew the number of hours I've spent in dentists chairs. I should probably have an honorary degree by now.

ryanjoachim

I envy people who don't mind going to the dentist. I've been classified as having odontophobia, dentophobia, dentist phobia, etc.

I'm not a guy to get scared easily, but everything about the dentists just gets to me. I get sweaty, clammy, nervous, nauseous, and just downright freaked out.
And that's all before I get into the actual dentist chair/room.

Then I freeze up. Every muscle in my body goes tense and I clench the arms of the chair so hard that my fingers crack sometimes. I hardly breath at all, I keep my eyes closes, and I feel like i'm going to die from the fear.

It's easy for me to joke about it after the fact, but thinking about going in for any procedure without being "knocked out" for it makes me a very unhappy person.