Dentures

About a week ago I got a full set of dentures, uppers and lowers both. I'd had my teeth pulled -- what few remained -- in early  November and expected new dentures by January, but no such luck. The lab, they said, was backed up. Well, that's what they said.

My mother had dentures from the time of her stint in the Army during WWII when she was in her thirties. I never really understood what she was going through. Or that she was going through anything with regard to her missing teeth. The only time I was aware of her dentures giving her difficulty was when her upper denture broke in half and she had to wait over a week to get a new one made. She was pretty miserable.

My father had an upper denture, but his lower teeth were his own. 

I had bad teeth since I was just a tyke. I remember my first encounter with a dentist when I was in the second or third grade. I had crooked lower teeth and the dentist who'd come to the elementary school to check us out was filled with contempt and mockery at discovering that my teeth were not perfectly straight and white and beautiful. It was deeply disturbing to me, and I didn't want to see a dentist again. I didn't, in fact, see one until I was well into my fifties and my teeth were giving me lots of problems -- including a couple of bouts of pneumonia. No fun. I had a number of teeth pulled and then more out later. Some fell out on their own. By the time I had the rest of them pulled last November I think I had 23 left, six of which were pretty well gone from decay.

The dentist was very kind and gentle and expensive, and my dental insurance proved to be all but worthless for what needed to be done, but oh well. It was believed by my doctors and me that the spinal infection I suffered last summer and fall was due to a bad tooth that had allowed oral bacteria into the blood stream that settled in my spine and caused me pretty profound pain and disability and a long period of recovery and rehabilitation which still really hasn't ended. Rather than taking the risk of it or something worse happening again, I thought it would be better to replace those remaining, rotting teeth with dentures.

It's been a challenge. I became used to not having teeth at all. Gumming food is tricky but it can be done, and I got pretty good at it. Dentures require a whole nother set of mouth skills, ones I'm still developing.

I found, for example, that I cannot bite or chew with the dentures unless they are firmly stuck to the gums with Fixodent or some other glue. They stay in without the glue, but not if I try to bite or chew something. Then they come loose and sort of roll around with whatever I'm eating. Not a pretty sight or comfortable way to enjoy a sandwich or something.

They are the smallest teeth I could imagine. They are the size of teeth a child might have it seems to me, and it takes quite a bit of getting used to to feel comfortable with them. My dentist thinks they look great, and I suppose they do, but every time I smile in the mirror, I'm reminded of a "coon smile." This is something raccoons do as a threat display. Most people never see it, but I have seen it when a colony of raccoons moved into our garage in California. Oh, they were the sweetest things. We hand-fed some of them, petted them, laughed at their antics, but they were fierce in defense of their territory against other raccoons. So one day a raccoon confronted a stranger that was not part of the colony and they squared off against one another. Both showed the "coon smile." It looks just like a tiny human toothy grin. I've tried to find a picture of it, but the google is useless these days. On raccoons, it's not a grin. It's a "get the fuck out of here" smile, and when I saw it, both the raccoons were trying to get the other one to go away. The one that belonged to the colony won when he (I assume it was a he) followed up with the loudest roar I could think of from such a small creature. I swear it was as loud as a lion's roar. Which I heard many times in the circus.

In getting used to these dentures, I'm finding I can bite and chew though poorly. I can't really feel where the teeth are, and they only go about half-way back in my mouth. This absence of tooth feel is disorienting. It's getting better, but still it's frustrating. Hot coffee or soup or even mac and cheese loosen the dentures, and if there's any solid in the food, like ia chunk of meat in soup, they tend to want to fall out. Strategy will keep them in. But food can get stuck behind the denture line, and that's annoying. My gums tend to swell and sores have developed here and there. It only hurts when I chew or bite down on something. Otherwise the dentures are really quite comfortable.

I've taken naps with the dentures in my mouth, but I take them out overnight and don't put them back in until after I've had my morning coffee. Maybe 9:00 or 10:00. My mouth and gums are more uncomfortable without them these days.

As I say, when I was growing up, I never understood what having dentures did to my mother's disposition, but now I think I do, at least somewhat. You really never forget dentures are in your mouth and you're always thinking about how to keep them in and stable. You have to think about your food, how to eat this or that, what you have to do to make it edible in the first place -- how to cook it, how to cut it up, and whether you can eat it at all. 

You're also in pain or discomfort at least some of the time. Food gets stuck on your upper palate and behind the gum line. Owies are not uncommon. You try to do your best and mask your discomfort, but I know there are times you have to rush to the bathroom and take the damn things out and clean off whatever is causing pain or discomfort, then put them back without another application of Fixodent, knowing you can't bite on anything again, probably until the following day.

You can't eat an apple or an ear of corn on the cob. Nope. Nagannahappen. But puddings and pie, sure. Some things you can't gum, either, and even when I had my own teeth there were things I had to stay away from like hard candy.

Oh, it's just another factor of aging. There are so many things to take into account. Never thought I'd live this long in the first place, so I don't feel as old as I am. My chronological age and my mental/emotional age don't correspond. I'm physically frailer and frailer as the years go by. And yet I feel like I should be able to do much more than I physically can. So many things take so much longer to do -- or I can't do them at all. 

More later...