What ever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. But sometimes it makes it more difficult to chew also.
Yeah. One of my strongest earliest memories is when I was less than three y.o. We were at my dad’s old army buddy’s house for a party, and one of the guy’s sons was showing off their bunk beds (with Disney bedspreads). I’d never seen bunk beds before, and I followed him up the ladder to the top bed. Once there, I didn’t know how to get down. I thought I was going to have to go down the ladder head first, and it terrified me. So, I jumped.
I can still remember the feeling of hitting the linoleum floor.
Luckily, I just lost my two front baby teeth, and my permanent teeth eventually came in fine.
My sister had full lower dentures in her 50s and she loves them. Of course they look a lot better than her bad lower teeth did.
I don’t know why she needed them; nobody else in our family has bad teeth. She was / is an alcoholic so maybe that has something to do with it.
I lost my teeth a couple years ago. Too many years of sitting at a desk drinking Mountain Dew. A few started falling out and I went in to have the remainder assessed. As the dentist was examining them and calling out the results to his assistant I heard; “poor, poor, gone, remove, etc” and the concusion was that they all needed to come out. Those bad teeth could have killed me.
So he offered options. One option was 4 posts up (implants) and 4 posts down and then screw in a full set of teeth. Great, give me a quote. $57,000 as in 57 thousand dollars! I am not spending my 401k on teeth! So dentures it was.
I had about 20 teeth pulled in one day and a set of temporary dentures put in place for a few weeks I think it was. Didn’t even hurt much, I think I took 2 of the Tylenol 3s they gave me. The permanent dentures fit well on the bottom but the top ones get a little slimy underneath and I often take them out and clean that. I do not use denture adhesive. God, that stuff is awful, trying to get it out of your mouth later is like peanut butter and industrial glue. Tried a couple times and never again.
In practical matters the dentures are just for cosmetic reasons, trying to eat with them in can result in having a mouth full of food with your dentures floating around in your mouth at the same time. Eating out with friends is to eat very carefully, eating at home is to eat without the damn things in my mouth at all.
I hope your results vary.
Have you tried denture powder like Fixodent? A small amount of powder creates a seal between the denture and your mouth. No taste unless you get the flavored kind, and it washes away easily. It will hold a properly fitted denture securely enough to eat just about anything. You can even eat corn on the cob, just chomp on only a couple of rows at a time.
I had 2 upper and 2 lower implants put in. My dentures snap on to them. No problems getting between them and the gums to clean, I just take them out. 4 upper or lower posts with fixed attachments will help hold the shape of the jaw over time. My jaw changes shape and I’ll need the snaps in the denture to be moved. The snaps are plastic and do wear out eventually.
There are a lot of options for missing teeth now and more on but I had it all done when I was still working and two dental insurance policies defraying a lot of costs. I wouldn’t consider spending my retirement money on expensive procedures now because I want to waste some of it on other things.