I had two old dental fillings go bad. The upper tooth had a piece break off next to the filling and it had decay under it. That required a new porcelain crown.
The lower tooth had decayed around and under the filling. Dentist drilled everything out and put in a newer and larger filling.
Got the work finished yesterday. My wallet is $1200 lighter. Delta Dental Insurance paid the rest.
I’ve heard older family members talk about dental work eventually failing.
First time for me. I’m doing the best I can to keep my teeth in good shape. Go in for cleanings twice a year. I use a prescription, high fluoride toothpaste the dentist sells for $15.
I’ve heard genetics plays a role. Some people suffer from gum disease their entire lives.
How’s your dental health? Still catching up on work missed during Covid? I didn’t go for 18 months and missed three cleanings.
I actually had to have a crown put on a cracked tooth during covid. I did alright. Unfortunately, my dentist did not survive the covid years (not covid - massive heart attack from what I heard).
Anyhow - my first two fillings ever finally failed. Both were over 40 years old. Nothing lasts forever. Assuming the repairs hold the second set might outlive me.
Another sign I’m old is that I occasionally have younger hygienists go “wow - you’re old enough to have amalgam?”
Since I got the two oldest fillings replaced only have one of the ugly old style left. I expect I’ll have to get that one replaced sometime in the next decade.
God. I made the mistake of agreeing to a root canal 2 years ago. Went to the wrong place. It hurt During the procedure, with novocaine. Hurt and throbbed that night!
Thats not normal. No way am I going back there. Too stressed to get it redone, unless I’m knocked out.
If I have it pulled, it creates a gap where my (few teeth left) will not be stable.
*you’re (the pedant in me won’t let me ignore this comfortably. ;-D )
I’ve got one old old filling that’s retracting a bit, so I have a nice rough edge on it that my tongue always finds. My dentist says they can revise it once they’re able to get more help in the office and take care of backed up urgent dental issues, as this issue of mine apparently has no urgency.
Owing to poor dental hygiene as a youngster and my incessant diet of hard candy, I have managed to have five teeth with amalgam fillings get to the point where crowns were required.
And then one of the crowns broke last year after a decade of service. Now I know how a dentist removes a permanent crown: they use a little saw to slit it along the side and peel the metal away from the stump.
I am happy with my crowns!
I have other teeth that once had amalgam but now have new composite fillings. A world of difference! They are tooth colored, and they adhere to the tooth; amalgam doesn’t. Amalgam works strictly by mechanical dovetail means, so can act as a wedge.
Okay … for now. When I was young, stupid, and building models, I had the really bad habit of using my teeth to open those little jars of paint. My first chipped tooth put a stop to that. I’ve had some old fillings replaced with crowns over a period of several years; two of those abscessed under the crowns and both teeth had to be removed. Fortunately nowhere near the same time.
I had all my old amalgam fillings replaced with a less-toxic version of amalgam around 1990, that would be about age 30. This was done because A) I had a lot of fillings and B) I also had a crap dentist when I was in college and he did a poor job with the fillings he put in. The result was that I had a tooth crumble because there was ongoing decay happening under the fillings he did. So, to be safe, we replaced them all. But thanks to my weak teeth (inherited), I now have three crowns, one implant and a tooth that needs to be seen to. But not until after I find a job.
I had one filling replaced many years ago. I had another tooth crack and need a root canal. The rest (4 teeth) have been fine. The root canal wasn’t bad, except that he missed one of the channels. The guy who fixed it, it turned out, was a friend of the dentist who messed it up. He told me he was going to “bust his friend’s balls”.
Meh. I had my twelve year old molars arrive with enamel defects. The dentist suggested filling them sooner (before decay set in) rather that later. Made sense at the time, and still does. Other than that, one filling due to decay in my early 20’s. After that they tooth-colored composite came into fashion.
I first had fillings fail in my 40s, maybe? I still have one childhood filling, probably 45 or 50 years after i got it.
I had a large filling crack recently, and had it replaced with a gold onlay. I also have a couple of gold crowns. I had to argue to get that. No, i don’t care if it looks like a real tooth, i want to be able to crack nuts with it.
I think i had my dentist replace all the old amalgam fillings recently, on the theory they were getting old, and something might get under there. None of them proved to be problematic, though.
I find that as I’ve gotten older, both good and bad things happen in relation to teeth. The good part is that, perhaps because of slower metabolism, cavities and toothaches seem to be much more rare than when I was younger. The bad part is that fillings do indeed fail – I’ve lost a few and only repaired one, which was a very bothersome loss in a front tooth that absolutely had to be fixed. Also, teeth may become more brittle with age and more likely to crack or have a piece break off.
I have a lot of fillings. A few amalgam, mostly composite. One crown. These were mostly from my younger days. About 6 or 7 years ago, my dentist recommended I switch to an electric tooth brush. I did, and I haven’t had a cavity since.
One of my best friends is a dental hygienist. I was her first patient in clinic, and went back multiple times. I felt a little bad for her because of all the fillings. You can feel some of the edges with the dental probe, and it takes time to really believe that it’s ok to scrape against them. One of the things I learned sitting in the chair is that if the hygienist causes a restoration to fail, it’s because it was ready to fail, not because the hygienist caused it. (For the most part.)
I also learned how to number my teeth, and how to use terms like lingual and facial to describe parts of the tooth. I’ve known my actual dentist for 20+ years (and been a patient of his the whole time), and we’re friendly. He even let my friend shadow a hygienist when she graduated, to get comfortable in a real office environment. He gets a kick out of it when I describe things with the technical terms
And I mentioned this in another thread talking about dental health, but it’s worth mentioning here in case more people aren’t aware - if you have sensitive teeth and use a special toothpaste for it, you most likely aren’t supposed to rinse your mouth afterwards. That’s just washing the treatment out before it does it’s thing. I know that’s the advice for the stuff I use, and it started working WAY better once my friend taught me that!
