When I was 12 years old my father stopped taking me to the dentist. He really never cared about my physical well being so when I was 15 years old my teeth were beautiful but on my birthday I had an accident.
For my birthday we had pizza from Mr. Shoes in Penfield, NY. As I bit into my first bite of pizza I felt a very painful something in my molar on the right bottom of my mouth. There was a staple jammed into my tooth from the pizza! It damaged my tooth and caused me longterm pain that caused many other things. I was way to scared to ever get it looked at so I lived with it and pretended it didn’t exist. I brushed and flossed several times a day and then when I was about 32 years old I bit into a sucker and cracked my eye tooth. It was awful and I ended up having to find a dentist.
As I was being examined by the dentist, whom I ended up thinking was completely AWESOME, I found that my mouth had a lot of problems that all looked to stem from the molar that was damaged all those years ago and then infested my mouth. For a few years we did a lot of dental work trying to get the damage under control so that it at least stopped long enough to start some major repairs.
When I was 37 I had been suffering from a sinus infection for almost two years that they couldn’t seem to completely get rid of. I went in to get help and they gave me antibiotics and a pain reliever. I got home took 1 of both pills and fell asleep. When I woke up an hour later the right side of my face was a bit swollen. I went into the hospital and they didn’t believe anything was wrong. I started taking photos of my face because it kept swelling. I got home and my face continued to swell so I went back to the hospital and they again told me they didn’t see the swelling really as a concern because they didn’t think it was much swelling. I continued to take photos and went back home. I got home and my right eye was now swollen closed. You couldn’t even see that I had a right eye because my face had swollen so much.
I went back to the hospital and showed them the photos with the time stamps of the day. They still didn’t really believe me until a doctor from the morning ran into me and was astonished at the swelling. He took me and spoke with the doctors himself so they understood how fast and drastic the swelling actually was.
They did xrays on my head and a bunch of other tests at which point they explained that my sinus cavity was compacted and full of infectious fluid. I had two options: have it cleaned out with a small incision in my face and then stitched closed OR try to go into my sinus paths using my mouth as an access point. I said umm not my face for sure!
They then brought me to a surgical room and had me sign papers. I was in so much pain I didn’t even understand what I was signing until the next day when I realized they pulled 2 teeth out trying to get the best access.
My sinuses were not a problem until almost 3 years later when they started to have infection problems again but in the mean time I lost those teeth and have really not smiled since!
This year a goal is to get my teeth fixed so I can smile comfortably again!