Day 18 – Your favorite birthday

Day 18 - I'm skipping over a few because this one is important to me.

My 54th birthday is, so far, my favorite birthday because it is, in fact, a re-birthday.

On my birthday this year I went and got dentures.

Some of you might be horrified, asking "Why would you go and do something so painful on your birthday?!"

Well, it all started when I was little and I have a very good reason for wanting to do this now.

I was a very sick little girl. I had kidney infections constantly! The urethra was narrowed so urine backed up and the infections went to my kidneys - and to combat that, my doctor prescribed sulfa drugs. The only side effect known then was that mosquitoes didn't like it so I never got bit.

I read years later that it was also responsible for yellowing teeth. I've told you in earlier posts that we weren't wealthy and that milk on the table was a luxury that happened once a week. We had beans, which are a source of calcium, but how many kids like beans?

When I was very young I had a terrible toothache from a cavity. For weeks I cried myself to sleep at night, the ache almost unbearable, and at times I snuck into my older brothers bed and pressed my cheek to his shoulder for the relief of his body heat on my poor face. He must have told my Mom because one day she told me that she and Daddy and I were going to get an ice cream. We ended up, instead, at Dr. Ezekiel's office - an antique dentist from the middle ages, who had no sympathy for the fear that I certainly displayed. Mom held one hand, Daddy the other, and the dentist shoved a needle full of acid like novocaine into my gum and then pulled out the tooth.

That day was my first impression of the dentists office and I never complained about a toothache again, to anyone, ever. My teeth yellowed because of the antibiotics and they hurt and I kept my mouth shut... I never smiled to show my teeth - not even for school pictures.

See - No teeth showing.

When I was a teen, the front two teeth had cavities behind them and eventually it broke through into the front - after much pain. So because it was noticable, off to the dentist I was carted. My mother and my sister went with me this time. Dr. Weeks wasn't much better as a dentist but he did use Nitrous Oxide or laughing gas, so the shots didn't hurt so much but the fillings were always whiter than my teeth so they stood out like sore thumbs. Eventually they fell out, had to be replaced, the bottom teeth had to have multiple fillings and they never stayed either. When I was 22, and my son was about a year old, I went to a dentist who took impressions for the front 6 teeth in my upper gum.

This is what I've had to "smile" with for 32 years.

The partial was going to wrap around the incisors and was supposed to fit right into the holes left by the extracted teeth. I didn't get to see them before he put them in. He pulled the teeth, shoved the partials into the holes and said " Don't take them out for three days." He gave me a prescription for tylenol 3 with codiene and left. After the first day I was nearly dying with the pain. I gently pulled them out so my gum would get some relief, and could never get them back in! I was horrified to put it mildly. So I finagled and wrangled and twisted the wires so they would wrap around the incisors while the partial rode on the FRONT of my upper gum, and was all but invisible when I smiled. I don't think my husband at the time ever knew the despair I felt that these teeth didn't fit right and that I was too petrified to go back to this dentist so he could force them back into place. I kept my secret very well. Over time the wires wore off the enamel and those teeth decayed. Teeth behind them also wore away and broke off. Throughout the years, one by one, my teeth wore down, fell out, broke off, and left me with nothing to bite or chew with. When I got sick in 2000, I took massive amounts of Prednisone and other drugs to combat a serious bowel disease. These drugs loosened what was left of my teeth and I lost a few more.

I was majorly depressed and trying to hide that from the world and my family was an ordeal that I never want to go through again. Putting on a happy face when you're embarrassed to talk to them, or to let them see you eat, was sheer misery. I began to let my hair grow out and go gray because I think I wanted to fade into that gray area where you're not noticeable... I can psychoanalyze myself with the best of them! I told people that I liked the silver - and I did, because it fit my self-esteem - gray.

I seriously didn't want to be noticed. My fear of dentists had a most extreme affect on my whole life!!!

Two years ago I went to a Christmas party with my sister, as I have done for the last 5 years. One of the girls in her office came around taking pictures... We put our heads together, my sister and I, and smiled. Jo has pretty white teeth so she proudly smiled. I closed my mouth and smiled. The girl took the pictures and said, okay, once more. Smile big. I opened my mouth and smiled big, but because my partial rode up so high under my lip, it looked as if I hadn't really smiled ... She took the picture again and looked at it and said "Don't you want to show your teeth?" I wanted to crawl under the table and I was thinking - Yes! I want to show teeth! I wish I had teeth to show! I wish I had teeth that I was proud of! But I couldn't so I shook my head and she went on.

At my grandson's birthday party my granddaughter was trying to take a self portrait of she and I. She kept taking the pictures and looking and said " Smile, Ma!" So I gave my grimace version of a smile and she took the pictures. After three or four she got a little exasperated and frustrated and said " You don't know how to smile, Ma."

She was right but she didn't know how right!

So I decided that I had to smile, for her, for the people at the office parties, for myself, for everyone, because I don't like this gray area I found myself living in. I felt like I was disappearing! I am sure it's just psychological but I felt like I was left out of parties, events, get-togethers, etc because of the way I looked. I wouldn't smile so I think I must have looked sour all the time. My teeth were an embarrassment so I seldom talked while looking someone in the eyes and eye contact is imperative for communication! I wouldn't eat around people. I couldn't bite or chew. My co-workers wanted me to go out to get a hot dog ... Ha! I couldn't bite it. I went on my own, bought them, brought them home and ate them with a fork.

So I finally made the first step and called Sensational Smiles of Charleston.

I decided that for my birthday I'd be able to smile. So I went, talked, had the impressions done, explained my history and fear with and of dentists, and felt like they knew enough to be gentle with me.

On Monday I had the first try in. I liked them but they were small.

My daddy and most of my siblings had small teeth too, but for a first time brilliant smile, I wanted it to be big! So I went back Tuesday, the 12th for the second try in. I met the doctor who would be pulling my teeth that day too.
Dr. Gutierrez was like a best friend you didn't know you had until you met her. She listened to me, and I instantly felt at ease about her. She looked at the teeth that we'd worked with the day before and we both agreed that they were a better choice with a few modifications. She was about to ask me to come in the next morning and I think someone told her how desperate I was about having new teeth and a smile for my birthday because she came in and said she had a patient she had to work with but she would take my teeth down to the lab herself, do what needed to be done, and sure enough within 20 minutes she was back and with the perfect teeth!

The next morning I took the two valium when I got to Jo's work and she drove me to the dentist office.Dr. Gutierrez worked on my mouth, swabbing novacaine on my gums, and I noticed it was taking her awhile so after she moved her hand from my mouth I asked her about the shots. I said " I'm ready" So she laughed and said " We're done!" That was one side. The second side was the same... I never felt the needle! She said she uses a Ph balanced numbing medication and that most people feel a pinprick but that the burning pressure is not the needle - it's the medicine. She was just awesome and I love her for being so considerate.
Within 5 minutes she had the teeth out, and the new teeth in!
I've been foolishly taking pictures of myself, smiling, not smiling, from the front, from the side... I can't believe it really is me! I don't really look like me  or not the me I was used to seeing; the sallow, sunken cheeked, toothless, smileless, unhappy looking woman that so many know.

A co-worker asked me " How long did it take you to come to this decision?" I told him that it was a few months... Actually, it took me longer than I've known him - 15 years.
So now my daughter, and others, say I have taken those 15 years off. I have colored my hair again, got it cut... I feel new. I smile and it feels crazy good! It's fun!
No one knows, and probably can't understand how bad I felt about myself. It's hard to listen to people talk about going to the dentist to get their teeth cleaned, to have a filling put in, to have a cracked tooth repaired - and before they can talk to me about what dentist I use, I change the subject, or pretend to notice something else... anything to take the attention away from me - because I know they see. I know they wondered.
And now that it is done, I wonder myself, why I waited this long. Technology has progressed so far, and everyone I talked to said that the shots don't hurt... I didn't believe them.
Fear - Fear is truly a stronger, inescapable prison than the stoutest steel and concrete edifice.
I noticed the difference when I went out yesterday and today ... people spoke to me, smiled at me, LOOKED at me. And I dazzled them with a smile that came from the dentist office but more importantly it came from the heart.
So today is the best birthday I can remember because I got something I never had -  A smile to be proud of.

Happy re-birthday to me!



From this---






To this 

From this woman-

To this woman.