i have not been to a dentist in probably 10 years

When my daughter was 8 or 9, she had a friend whose parents went overboard on the orthodontia - that poor kid seemed to have had every tooth in her mouth pulled, then when the new ones came in they immediately got wrapped in metal and clamped into place. I couldn't imagine subjecting my kid to that much painful intervention, so she has one bicuspid that is out of line. Which she hates and occasionally blames me for not slapping her in braces, but if she really wants it dealt with she can pay for it herself now.

ok, you're making me feel better! i just keep reading horrible stories of people needing $15k worth of dental work and getting really paranoid.

-- bell_labs, Thursday, April 24, 2008 1:27 PM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

ive had cavities and have some tooth pain :-/

when i underwent the orthodontia, basically anything that required my active intervention just didn't happen -- i wouldn't wear the headgear or the retainer or whatever. i still turned out relatively human-looking.

Me too. I would actually fall asleep with them on and then in my sleep take them off and throw them clear across the room. My teeth totally shifted and I hate them because I swear I was Jaq's daughter's friend. I had 10 baby teeth pulled at 8 to make way for braces which I then had until I was 14. I deserve perfect teeth dammit! I just wonder what the hell I would have looked like if I hadn't had all that crap done.

I am also going to the dentist in a couple weeks and scared shitless. I already know I need to have one of my wisdom teeth pulled and am dreading what else they'll say I need done.

wisdom teeth weren't that big of a deal for me because i had them done at once, while i was under general anesthetic. i'm a big fan of being unconscious whenever possible.

I didn't go to the dentist as a teenager, and in my 20s (I'm 25) I've spent well over $6K fixing them.. with insurance these last three years. $2400 to remove my four grossly rotted wisdom teeth that took years to come out. I blame my Dad and his "we don't need dental care" attitude :(

GO TO THE DENTIST! SEND YOUR KIDS! etc

I went to the dentist yesterday. Three cavities, lucky me. I have teeth like marshmallows!

wisdom teeth weren't that big of a deal for me because i had them done at once, while i was under general anesthetic. i'm a big fan of being unconscious whenever possible.

See, I'm TERRIFIED of getting general anesthesia so that sounds awful to me. I've had one wisdom tooth pulled already (they all came in without incident) and that was a "Hey we're just going to fill that cavity today oh wait no we're not - it's too deep. How'd you like to get a wisdom tooth out with no advance warning or prep time?" type situation and ended with me in tears because I was so scared. The anticipation was worse than the actual extraction though.

I think I'm most afraid they're going to say I need root canal because everyone makes that sound so scary.

root canals aren't so much painful as they are tedious

i felt like i was sitting there forever. bored out of my skull as they bored into it.

Wisdom teeth was actually kind of fun with the drugs and all

i didn't mind getting my one wisdom tooth pulled. it took about thirty seconds.

I didn't get any drugs! My dentist is an asshole.

I was under completely. When i saw the shit going into my veins my eyes rolled back

i had four of them pulled, and they had to drill into the center of the lower to break them up for extraction. anesthetics don't work well for me; i woke from the general sobbing in pain.

omg that sounds awful.

oof, yea mine were broken up. I woke up and said "when do we start"

it was pretty terrible. what's worse is that i couldn't have any of the painkillers the next day for reasons of allergy, so i had to try and numb the pain with tylenol, which is about as effective as sugar-water

i had all four wisdom teeth out, and yeah, my bottom two had to be broken up before extraction. i was still a little bit awake when they started, it felt like the dentist was leaning on my lower jaw with a railroad spike with his full weight. then i went under. pretty freaky.

good luck ENBB!!

I can't really comprehend a dentist getting away with putting someone under for a clean up! That's weird.

I was having tooth pain until I went to the dentist, and then after they said that there was nothing wrong, it went. It was probably the guilt of not going for so long.

i woke up sobbing too! but it was after the surgery, at least.

I woke up from my laughing gas after having my wisdom teeth taken out, and said "you're so pretty!" to my Grandmother who was sitting across from me waiting for me to wake up. Awww.

Root canals don't hurt nearly as much as the cavity that necessitated my getting a root canal! Ugh.

my wisdom teeth are all fine and dandy

my friend's brother, an alcoholic/substance abuser, had to be put under for a cleaning after not going to the dentist for several decades.

i go to the dentist 3x/yr. i'm not gonna do the wisdom teeth thing unless absolutely necessary.

You're not making me feel better!! See, the wisdom tooth I have to get pulled is already broken so I'm pretty sure it's just going to shatter as soon as they go near it. ugh. I know I have to go but it sucks. Maybe I should get over my fear of being put under.

I wouldn't have done the wisdom tooth thing either but the one that has been pulled and the one that needs to be pulled both had cavities. The dentist said I have really soft cavity prone teeth. :-(

Linds my mom had a palate expander! In her late thirties! She had a very narrow jaw, though, and needed it to fit her teeth in (even though she had like 5 pulled). It hurt tons but she lost a fair bit of weight by not being able to eat for a day after every half-turn... o_O

Then she had braces for a while, then one of those clear trays. They told her since she waited until adulthood her teeth will never STAY in place without help, they'll always eventually try to shift back if she stops using the retainer.

waited until adulthood her teeth will never STAY in place without help, they'll always eventually try to shift back if she stops using the retainer.

I looked into getting invisalign or something like that because I'm so mad that my teeth shifted and was told the same thing.

Blessedly, Mr. Gladwell makes his point without reference to Oprah, that Great Connector in the Sky. Instead, he does a splendid job describing mere mortals such as Texas economist (and "Maven") Mark Alpert: avid reader of Consumer Reports , electronics wizard, evangelist and all-around know-it-all, a paragon of the "pathologically helpful." You know the type: hell at dinner parties; heaven when you're shopping for a car, or need emergency Yankees tickets. Walking data banks like Mr. Alpert–along with the Connectors, and the Salesmen–are crucial to the spread of social epidemic. Together they explain why the New York family in need of orthodontia will end up, sooner or later, in the office of Marc Lemchen, D.M.D., P.C., Park Avenue at 62nd Street (570-2333).

looool

ENBB, I had my wisdom teeth pulled under general anesthesia and had no problems at all. Sobbing (also laughing) after any kind of anesthetic is very common and generally not related to pain but as a reaction to the drugs. My younger sister is deathly afraid of going under, and had all 4 wisdom teeth pulled in the same session while wide awake - she prepared with some self-hypnosis and I think acupuncture.

i'm a big fan of being unconscious whenever possible.

yesssss. except that when i woke up, the anaesthetic make me puke, which is mildly unpleasant after having yr wisdom teeth pulled. other than that, it wasn't bad at all.

i was in high school and had to read 'canticle for leibowitz' during my recovery, which was kind of a downer.

i should get another retainer

i think teeth & jaw just shift around no matter what, right?
but yeah i'm pretty o_O abt going to the orthodontist as an adult
i remember this pink putty tray thing they put in to take impressions and it tasted like mint+plastic+cement but there was something sort of satisfying about the way it went schlock!fhup! when they pulled it out. obv they wld have to use that again. also the around-the-head xray.

if i actually had money i wld be all about this and skin lasers

and some other stuff

sometimes when you have pain and think you have cavities, it's actually just really sensitive teeth which may or may not be related to gum issues which may or may not be caused by having too much plaque which may or may not easily go away.

boob job? xpost

yeah anyways i'd try the lasers too. and ass implants, obvs.

how about boobs in your teeth that would be fun

i wanna get diamonds implanted in my nips

my boobs should get jobs!

to pay for my orthodontics

i don't know what kind of applicable skills and abilities they have tho. i mean their resume is all "1989 - 2008 - sitting there, wearing shirts, getting in the way, sometimes being awesome, yknow whatever"

I had all four wisdom teeth pulled over the summer, and my mom went with me so that she could drive me home. The doctor showed us the calculation: $175 per tooth without sedation, $800 with (or maybe it was a package deal--I can't remember, and my mom and I looked at each other and decided to go forgo the savings. It was fine, really, the worst part was hearing the loud crack!s. The dentist also advised against sedation--he said it wasn't really necessary.

i went to the dentist today. i nearly fainted when he showed me the fee schedule of what my procedures (which i still haven't had done) would cost. i'm thinking i'll just wait until that dream job with the dental plan comes through. dear democrat presidential candidates: you better be serious about universal health care.

the more dentists i see, the more convinced i am that they're all snake-oil salesmen.

I think you're right.

When I finally went to one about 18 months ago, he said I had a hairline fracture of my right rearmost molar, should be crowned, etc., only cost $600 if you want to go ahead and do it, blah blah. It's never given me a minute of trouble so I said no thanks. Oh and three cavities mysteriously turned into four when the filling started.

has anyone used care credit (or whatever it's called)? seems like a ripoff even if you go for the "no interest" option -- it's still around 22% APR, and if you want the extended payment option the interest is 11% on top of that. on the plus side, it comes in handy if the dentist wants all the money upfront and you don't actually HAVE the money.

Oh wow. I thought I had contributed to every teeth thread ever.

I didn't go to the dentist for, like, 14 years. Basically as soon as they took the braces off and I went to college I just never went to a dentist, probably from a residual resentment of my creepy twin brother orthodontists.

When I went, about five years ago (because a tooth just broke into a zillion pieces while I was eating)I eneded up having four cavities (and fillings) and three root canals.

My wisdom teeth never came in and never became impacted, so I guess I lucked out.
I didn't get (wasn't offered) general anaesthetia for the root canals - just the basic huge needle filled with numbiness shot into four or five gum areas.
Oh and a crown for the shattered tooth.
I had it all done in a three or four month time period - so, I was at the dentists or the oral surgeons, once a week for many weeks.
it wasn't that bad! maybe I felt empowered by having it all done at once - like, I've been avoiding this for so many years, and now I'm really taking care of business!

I also had the palette widener, which actually has made my teeth more fucked up (and i will repeat - creepy twin brother orthodontists). My dentist(s) are always trying to get me to go to an orthodontist and get braces again.
I went, once, a few years ago, and the guy suggested breaking my jaw and re-setting it to get my teeth aligned. Uh...no. I mean, what the fuck - it's the twenty first century! Break my jaw?!
(Also, if something that drastic has to happen I would prefer going down after some gigantic brawl.)

So, not sure if any of this is helpful, but I didn't suffer all that much through the months of weekly fillings and/or root canals.

oh man i had kind of major emotional spaz yesterday b/c of profound realization of jaw misalignment issues which have become more pronounced in the past year but also come and go and have something to do with neuromuscular issue of some sort (involves some tmj pain and even intermittent numbness/drooping/crookedness of one side of face. fun! dumb.) so anyway i called a recommended orthodontist and they were like, well, since you're not a still-growing teenager and this is a jaw issue and not a teeth issue, then here's the number of the maxillofacial surgeon we work with. aaah! so i looked into it more and am going to try to avoid the major surgery on jaw route thanks... b/c it wld seem the misalignment actually gets better when i do yoga every day and exercise. which seems weird to me but hey. am going to see what accupuncture & chiropractic stuff do b/c wtf. also i am using my left hand on the mouse! it is weird
that is all