NO, Those Teeth Aren't Actually Mine
It’s easier to admit to a hip replacement than a denture.
This is the Snarky Sunday edition of Snarky Senior — the newsletter from Erica Manfred, which you can read about here. If you like it and don’t want to miss an issue, you can get it in your inbox by subscribing.
There is a lovely photo of me when I was sixteen which I often gaze at nostalgically. My nostalgia isn’t for my pretty young face or thick hair, but the full set of straight, sparkling white teeth I sported. That was the last time a photo was taken of me with such perfect teeth. By age 22 my passport photo shows the same face and hair, but with a snaggle-toothed grin.
I wish I could claim that I took great care of my teeth when I was young, but I didn’t. I chain-smoked (no one knew at the time that smoking causes gum disease) and I was a lazy brusher. Flossing was just too much to ask for a twenty-something girl who was rebelling against parental strictures. I had what the dentist called “gingivitis” which got progressively worse. Gum disease is insidious. It’s not painful, in fact you can pretty much ignore it until your teeth fall out. Denial is just too easy.
It wasn’t until I was forty that my smile improved—but that’s because I’d gotten all my teeth capped.
“How long will this work last?” I asked my dentist at the time.
“Oh, maybe fifteen years,”
I was shocked. I’d just spent more than $10,000 (this was in 1980). How could I ever afford to do this again fifteen years from now? I dismissed his prediction thinking somehow I’d beat the odds. Fifty-five was a long way off and, after all, what were the options? Dentures? No way. I’d had a temporary upper denture while a front tooth was being replaced and I thought I would choke to death because it triggered my gag reflex. I couldn’t imagine kissing anyone with a mouth full of plastic, eating without tasting my food, or taking out my teeth at night. As it turned out his prediction was optimistic. Those caps started falling apart closer to ten years later.
Before getting all that bridgework I had asked another dentist what I should do about my mouth and he told me flatly, but truthfully, “If you had good teeth and bad gums I’d tell you to have more periodontal work. If you had bad teeth and good gums I’d suggest more bridgework. But you have bad teeth and bad gums, so I don’t know what to tell you.”
His cruelly candid assessment of my mouth was right. I wish he had suggested having all my teeth pulled and getting implants back then instead of all that doomed bridgework. But that was not the conservative dental approach, which is always “save the tooth,” at least with patients who have the money for dental work which is why so many dentists still do root canals on doomed teeth. As it turned out, my teeth weren’t worth saving.
My antipathy to dentures started early. I’d gone out on a blind date when I was in my twenties. My date was attractive, but filled with the bravado of youth he bragged to me about the dentures he had to wear due to losing his teeth in an accident. Then he popped them out to show me and I recoiled. There was no second date.
In fact losing teeth really is terrifying. The most common anxiety dream is about losing teeth, even though in my dreams it’s losing my dentures. We kiss, eat and smile with our mouths—our teeth define not only our social status but our attractiveness. No one wants to admit to having ones that come out. It’s easier to admit to a hip replacement than a denture.
The shame associated with missing teeth is not only because a gap-toothed smile is a sign of age, but an indicator of poverty. With the miracle of modern technology you can get a full mouth of implant-supported permanent teeth that rival your own or you can get a Lexus. Medicare doesn’t cover implants or much else when it comes to dentistry.
After 25 years of drilling, root canals, caps and bridges, periodontal slicing and dicing, and countless days and nights of swollen-faced misery, my teeth progressively worsened. The worst thing was it never ended. Year after year I lost those expensive crowns and bridges as the teeth under them crumbled. I eventually wound up with partial dentures that were studded with more and more false teeth as my own got loose and had to be pulled. My life in the chair with the big glittering torture device above it was excruciating. I’m a trooper, so the pain hurt more in the pocketbook than in the mouth. I hated having to spend every spare penny on my mouth rather than on a new car, a vacation, or even clothes that didn’t come from thrift shops.
Eventually I did wind up with full dentures at sixty. Thank goodness by the time I lost all my teeth, new technology had come up with implant-supported dentures. They’re smaller, more comfortable and much more functional than old-fashioned dentures. They’re even more affordable, though far from cheap. However, they’re still removable. I take them out at night (at least when I’m alone.) Without the dentures I might frighten small children with the strange metal protuberances coming out of my mouth, or the way my cheeks collapse without them. I must admit, however, that I love them. The freedom from pain, constant expense and hours in that least relaxing of reclining chairs is liberating.
I learned so much about dentistry that I’m now an unpaid dental consultant.
“There’s no one who understands this, not even my shrink,” a friend told me after I gave her advice about how to handle an ill-fitting partial denture. “You have to wear dentures to know what I’m talking about,” she said.
That ubiquitous glass with the choppers next to grandma’s bed we’ve all seen in the movies is a symbol of a former generation’s innocence about aging. Unlike us, our grandparents weren’t expected to have unwrinkled faces, tight butts or sparkling white teeth. It wasn’t a crime to actually look old if you happened to be old.
I think it’s time for us denture wearers to come out of the closet. I’m tired of being terrified to be seen without my false teeth. Rationally, there’s no reason to feel such intense embarrassment. I’m divorced and have stopped dating, so I don’t have to worry about attracting the opposite sex. Why can’t I be like the cancer victims who brazenly take off their wigs and display their bald heads? Maybe because their hair will grow back and my teeth won’t? Whatever the reason, I want to stop hiding my toothlessness.
The last time my daughter stayed over I experimented with toughing it out and leaving the dentures in the container in the bathroom overnight. I said goodnight to her without them in. She didn’t even notice.
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