I spent most of my marriage putting other people first. And I don't really regret it. When my life is REALLY over I will be able to look back and say, I did the right thing. Even if it meant that I suffered, or did without. I think that is really what love is about. Not being the focus of everything being about you.
Now, however, I am in a different place. So I'm gonna tell a story.
I was a Tetracycline child...having been given it as a child with a high fever and it led to my front tooth being pretty discolored. I didn't smile with my teeth until I was in around 8th grade and my mom found a dentist to do this "paint" thing to the tooth. It was painted with something and then hit with an ultraviolet light and voila. The tooth was no longer discolored (as bad...this would have been the 70s so keep that in mind). Later, the same tooth was crowned, which made the tooth better, but the crown apparently irritated the gum around it to the point where I had a gingivectomy and I think the dentist went pretty ham with the cutting away of gum. Over the years I continued to have issues with that area. Always a little too pink and swollen, no matter what I did.
Then, one NYE morning, I was getting ready for work (Gymboree) and I pulled out a new pair of socks still wrapped in plastic and I did what I always do: I used my teeth to start the tear in the plastic/paper. When it didn't tear I looked at it and lo and behold my tooth was tucked under the paper. Before majorly panicking, I checked to see if the crown had come off of the stub. No, it hadn't. It snapped off leaving a very small piece of visible tooth at the gum line. NOW I panicked. I managed to get into the dentist who attempted to cement it back in place (remember, this is Dec 31), which lasted all of maybe an hour before it fell off. So, I spent NYE front toothless (which we spent at a hotel with family), not really in the mood to socialize. Go figure
When I got back into the dentist I had a decision to make. Do I get a partial plate, a bridge (and destroy two perfectly good teeth in the process) or an implant. The partial wasn't really an option. The bridge was the cost of 3 crowns and the implant was one, takes longer and is more expensive. I went with door number 3.
So. First step. Make a flipper (a temporary partial). Next step, pull the existing root. Once that was done I had to wait about 4 months for the hole to heal and for the bone to start filling in the empty space. Then the implant was installed. So, that is usually a metal screw only, but in my case they put the metal screw in with the abutment (that is the piece that screws into the screw think of the implant as like a metal molly bolt) with the crown attached. Normally this is a two step process. They put in the implant, let the gum heal and the bone attach to the implant, then the abutment, which means cutting the gums and allowing the gum to heal around the abutment, but in my case they put the implant and abutment in together. I still had to heal for another 4 months before getting the crown.
When you live without a permanent front tooth, getting ANYTHING into place is a relief. And like most things I do, I accepted substandard because I didn't want to make waves. The crown was installed but I was never really happy with it. It was sorta close to my natural tooth color but still a bit off. The shape never felt right...much bulkier than my other teeth but again, I accepted it because I didn't know better.
As the years went on , I had my teeth professionally whitened a couple times and it never seemed to help with the comparison against the crown. I mean my teeth looked positively gray in comparison, and yet I know they aren't. These past maybe 7-8 years it has become more and more readily apparent. Then I switched dentists and I asked her what can we do. I REALLY don't want to destroy my other front tooth to make them closer in color by crowning it too. She said...let's redo the old crown.
So, it has been about 8 weeks since I started the process and I'm still not done BUT, HOLY CRAP...the difference. I have spent a lot of time at the lab trying to get the color right. And for once I have someone ELSE looking out for my best interests. Saying, nope that's not good enough. We want this right, which is so completely foreign to me. And that's not just the lab but my dentist as well. Her take is if we do this, we do it right. I currently have crown #2 which is made from zirconium temporary glued in place, mostly because I had my son's wedding and wanted to be sure I actually HAD a tooth for the wedding. They wanted me to take it for a test run and see what I thought.
The problem is that they can't get the opacity of the crown because of the placement of the existing abutment which is too close to the surface of the tooth. So no matter how they color the tooth, it will always be too bright to hide the abutment and that brightness against my other teeth makes them look bad. "Comparison is the thief of Joy". I'm looking at the artwork my daughter did and it fits.
So, I am going back in to have crown #3 made with a new abutment that will be better placed within the implant allowing for greater opacity of the crown. The lab that does the color has a sign on the wall saying the best restoration is the one you can't tell is a restoration.
And I don't have to settle anymore.
*UPDATE* yeah, that abutment was going to cost me another $1200 in which insurance won't cover. So we're stepping up the bleach hoping to bring the others to the same brightness. Sigh...
