This is a thread for ILXORS IN THEIR 50's

I can confirm from work experience that dental implants are exceptionally stable if the bone is even moderately healthy. Not science obviously but those things are solid in jaws postmortem.

I just had my first one last year, it's been fine so far. It's next to another troublesome tooth, I have a feeling I may end up with two side by side.

I guess we can trust Jaq on this one.

What's the drill with cleaning them? Is it just like a normal tooth? Or do they require extra maintenance

I hope they don't need extra maintenance because I'm just brushing/flossing like a normal tooth.

Also lol I had not thought of it being lodged in my skull.

Remember goofy junior-high science fiction, where some kid with fillings or braces would start picking up radio signals from Moscow?

My teeth are pretty much in pieces at this point, I'm afraid. Several are ground down to the gum. I'd probably need at least five figures overseas to repair or remove, and probably an upper six figures to get them done here. They'll probably all be worn down or gone by the time I'm 65, and there's nothing I can do about it.

My teeth have been pretty fucked forever, but I started sleeping with one of those moulded mouthguard things a few years ago and that seems to have slowed the pace of destruction

I hate it (hate the concept, physically it is fine) and I put it off for years - but it seems to be making a big difference and I probably should have done it earlier - I hated having regular dental catastrophes more

I got a crown a year or so back, and I'm afraid I have not been taking care of it as scrupulously as I think I'm meant to - I tend not to floss, my teeth are very tight together and its very difficult. I've noticed a lot of nerve sensitvity reocurring recently which could mean the damn root under the crown is carking it. I dont want, and really cannot afford, rootcanal or implant replacement. Despite our excellent univeresal healthcare, dental (and mental) is the one area Australia shat the bed on and is thus hideously expensive.

one of my crowns fell out two days ago. i was eating a mini chocolate easter egg that was encased in a thin candy shell. this was during an in-person meeting at work. the crown came right off and i thought it was a piece of candy shell that had gone wrong in the manufacturing process. so i threw it away! five minutes later i’m rummaging in the bin for it. “don’t mind me”

oh btw i have my varifocals now and uh everything is warped and blurry unless i turn my head to look at it dead-on. this is progress????

never seen the point to them, it's not too much of a burden to have both reading and distance glasses.

i kind of agree but the thing is i did get some reading glasses from a store in the airport and i basically have to hold a book 2 inches from my face for them to work. :(

tracer, i found the exact same thing. a week later and i either don't do it so much or don't notice it so much (but yes, it's a thing, i don't think the lenses can curve to fit the frames and be correctly curved to correct the vision)

anyone have some more up-to-date studies on implants? I have one, "need" another, but have heard mixed reports about long term stability?

Anecdotally, my implant is still going strong for 24 years now.

Tracer, give it some time. IME progressive lenses take a couple of days for your brain to rewire where to look. It's incredible to me that the brain does this so quickly and on its own (in my case).

I'm just glad the tooth that fell out wasn't the one with cyanide in it.

they stuck it back in today. it turned out it had split in half, and the other half was still in there. how long will it last? i said. “could be next week, could be 5 years from now.” well it only cost £25. thank u based nhs

xpost I tend not to floss, my teeth are very tight together and its very difficult

i have this issue as well. i've have had good success (can actually get the floss between my teeth and get the floss out without fighting) using glide brand floss and some of the new waxed floss brands.

my dentist has told me that interdental brushes are better. i hate the waste they produce but i use them now and they do seem to work very well.

I've experienced almost every dental thing mentioned in this thread: Broken teeth (w/ bonus infection), root canals, replacement of Classic 80s Metal Fillings, deep cleanings that required anesthesia, and even the laser gum surgery.

My daily hygiene routine includes: Floss, Perio-Aid tool, Waterpik, and finish with a soft bristle tooth brushing and some mouth wash if I'm feeling nasty. Plus, I sleep with a Night Guard because my jaw-clenching is probably caused the gum issues (if you get a Night Guard, consider occasionally doing your own enzyme wash with a vinegar/water solution). The only common thing I have never had to do with my teeth is braces.

These days when I go in for routine teeth cleanings (4x a year - two of them I have to cover out-of-pocket), it takes them like 10-15 minutes to do them (they still cost the same as one that would take 45 minutes, of course).

my man

I (mostly) gave up bubble water/seltzer because my dentist said she could see little divots in the enamel.. "But I don't drink Coke, only unsweetened seltzers!" No matter, she said, it's the carbolic acid

it's not too much of a burden to have both reading and distance glasses.

Been my route for the last few years. Works just fine for me!

Trayce, they didnt do a root canal before putting the crown on? I thought that was standard.

I got the flu and then an old friend, a person of immense importance to the peer group that once was my whole social milieu, died -- he'd had cancer and preferred not to let people know, so it came as a shock -- most of us hadn't seen him in years, I saw him about ten years back just because my work takes me to various cities. He ran a coffee shop; it doesn't sound like much, but that coffee shop was the epicenter of social life for so many of us for a very long time -- many of us worked there, evenings often began there, as did days; it was a part of us for some time. That time passed long ago, but his death hurt us all so much -- we gathered on Facebook and just hurt together, off in various corners of our own worlds, mourning a time that passed so long ago, his death an occasion to mark the everyday loss of our earlier selves, of the greater thing we were then, which underwent the sort of slow fragmentation that's the natural end of scenes, of peer groups. I still have the flu, also the pollen in the air might/almost surely is making everything worse, but his death has me in crisis. He left our town at some point (long after I did) to return to Chicago, his original home, where his life continued and grew in many ways, and he was able to devote much of his time to a daughter he had late in life -- I have been doing the same work for 21 years, work that takes me away from home again and again, year in and year out. I'm very good at this work now...and I am plagued by the feeling that this is no way to live, that whatever my "self" is it takes a beating every time I hit the road and have to stitch it back together when I return, and that the internal cost of this process is too dear. "Is this who I am? Is this how I have chosen to live?" is perhaps the most ilxors-and-others-in-their-50s mood, of course, but I don't usually indulge any such thoughts, head down press forward make money, being parent to a disabled child makes that imperative more pressing for me, but in my sickness this week and in my grief I feel acutely that it is time for change for me.

^^^thank you for posting this; spouse and I are both in similar predicaments re: “is this who I am?” And very sorry for your loss. And the flu. Harder to cope when we physically feel like shit.

then i hope you find and can make satisfying change. or find a satisfying change of view, from which what you are doing feels more complete for you. and i’m very sorry for the loss of your friend.

sorry my post was xp. but yeah, peace to any ilxors feeling adrift, which def includes me.

Wishing you the best, JCLC, hope you are feeling better soon. The other stuff is a lot to deal with at the same time. Try to be kind to yourself and trust you will make the best decision you can when you are in a better place.

A lot to say about this but I don't think any of it would be helpful.

Commiserating is helpful

honestly anybody reading my thoughts has helped me today, I don't share much of this stuff but here among people with whom I've shared discussions for so long I feel free to unburden myself a little and it helps.

I'm very sorry for your loss, and really can identify with what you wrote. I am often struck by the loss of the feeling I had even 10-15 years ago, that anything was possible. This is definitely a time of narrowing options--but not no options at all. So I hope you can find something that gives you more peace.

update on my health: it was pneumonia & bronchitis. I'm now on a big ol cocktail of meds and just now took pleasure in eating for the first time in a week. I am mad as hell because I'm trying so hard to get back up to my long runs, running is important to me and I've been on a 2-year-plus injury jag but JUST this month I finally seemed to have turned a corner, ran 5k three times week before last....and then last week I was knocked down by illness and I know that recovering from pneumonia is yet another fuckin "take it easy on yourself" situation but there's only so easy I can take it, I'm back to work on Friday and my job involved two hours a night of being pretty energetic. main feeling right now is gratitude for the visit and feeling pleased with myself for resolving "just get your ass to the clinic as soon as you wake up" because I was in "I can't live like this, can I?" territory, it's still bad but the drugs are working.

attention bronchitis & pneumonia: 🖕

I am very much in a "is this gonna be my forever life?" place as well. Part of it's frustration with my publisher, who has not responded for a couple of weeks now to my emails about my upcoming book, but another part of it is getting itchy with the endless treadmill of writing about music generally. I'm starting to think more seriously than I have in years about Writing About Something Else For A Change. Sending three poems to a local literary magazine (no response yet) helped a little, and looking at some fiction projects with an eye toward self-publishing them is helping, too, because putting three older books out there will push me to finish a fourth that's fully plotted but only about 1/4 written. If my current "full-time" job lurches toward greater stability (which it might, soon), I will be in a position to make some decisions.

get well soon jclc.

running will come back soon enough. were you the person who recommended "what i talk about when i talk about running" on ilx? seems like you probly coulda.

possibly? as I am of the age to be on this thread, I do tend to forget a buncha stuff

How do you do, fellow 50 year olds?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMbxOUgPDsI

whatsuuuuuuuppppp … <coughs weakly>

Trayce, they didnt do a root canal before putting the crown on? I thought that was standard.

I never saw this before - they did say it was a better option, because its possible the tooth can still go south esp if I dont look after it. I dunno how that will pan out now - the tooth next to it just got pulled out completely lol. 3 days later and I still feel kinda run down and sore from it. There's another shitty thing about this age - everythign is so much bloody harder to recover from.

welcome, snoball! your orthopedic shoes will be arriving in time for your 4pm dinner reservation

Ugh tooth problems are the worst. Sorry your going through that, Trayce.

Thanks Sunny x I'm starting to feel better now. I really shouldnt have got drunk only 2 days after the extraction, ha ha. :(

I've experienced almost every dental thing mentioned in this thread: Broken teeth (w/ bonus infection), root canals, replacement of Classic 80s Metal Fillings, deep cleanings that required anesthesia, and even the laser gum surgery.

My daily hygiene routine includes: Floss, Perio-Aid tool, Waterpik, and finish with a soft bristle tooth brushing and some mouth wash if I'm feeling nasty. Plus, I sleep with a Night Guard because my jaw-clenching is probably caused the gum issues (if you get a Night Guard, consider occasionally doing your own enzyme wash with a vinegar/water solution). The only common thing I have never had to do with my teeth is braces.

These days when I go in for routine teeth cleanings (4x a year - two of them I have to cover out-of-pocket), it takes them like 10-15 minutes to do them (they still cost the same as one that would take 45 minutes, of course).

― beard papa, Thursday, March 14, 2024 6:25 PM (one month ago)

Fellow clencher and night-guard evangelist here. Absolutely recognise all of this, including the massive Eighties fillings now getting replaced because the teeth around them are finally splitting and splintering to pieces. I need to get a new night guard now because mine has split at the back. Before I do that, though, I need to get a THIRD root canal treatment and a crown which, I've been warned, might end up being useless because the tooth might be too far gone to support it for more than a few years.

Like you, I'm now meticulous about my dental hygiene and madly envious of people who don't have to be. We had friends over for a late night on Saturday night (dinner and Rummikub, because that's where we are now) and I spent most of Sunday watching films on the sofa with my night guard in, just in case I dozed off. That's how I broke a chunk off a tooth at Christmas, after all.

Did my annual physical last week and enjoyed this summary from the follow-up narrative from my doc: "well developed; well nourished; thin build; well groomed; no apparent distress" — I mean, for 54 I'm declaring victory. (Still waiting on cholesterol #s tho.)

(My wife says it sounds like a listing for animal adoptions at the local shelter)

Healthy coat

Everything being said about dental routines and suffering is painfully OTM.

(I lost my mouth guard, in my own damn house, a month or two ago. No idea where it could be. So far my jaw has been OK somehow.)