The tale of a tooth

It all started about 2 months ago when DH went in for a regular cleaning at the dentist's office. They discovered that there was some decay going on in one of his front teeth and so they scheduled a filling for the following week. So DH went in for what was supposed to be just a filling and when the dentist started drilling into the tooth he discovered that this was not normal decay that was going on, but something called external resorption. This means basically that the body is attacking the tooth and trying to reabsorb it. It can be caused by some type of trauma to the tooth or if the teeth are moved too quickly during orthodontic procedures - and it can take up to 20 or more years for the trauma to be discovered. At this point the dentist told DH that there was nothing that he could do for the tooth and that he recommended having the tooth pulled and an implant put in ASAP. The dentist put a temporary filling into the tooth and then sent him on his way. Needless to say, DH was not too happy when he came home from that appointment. (Incidentally, I had noticed some discoloration in that tooth lately, but didn't think anything of it other than normal color change of the teeth.)

After he got home he started doing some research on the internet and we decided to set up a consultation with the oral surgeon who did my implant 4 years ago. The worst part about all of this has been that it is one of DH's top front teeth. Anywhere else in the mouth and the consequences of this diagnosis wouldn't have been quite as bad or such a hard decision to make. Through the research that DH did, he found that there really is no good solution to this problem other than pulling the tooth. Sometimes there are procedures that can be done to prolong the tooth, but ultimately it will need to be pulled or it will fall out on its own - and possibly begin to affect the surrounding bone and teeth.

DH met with the oral surgeon and he said that DH was a good candidate for an implant and that they have changed how they do things from a few years ago. At this point there was some disagreement between the oral surgeon and the dentist as to what to replace the tooth with temporarily - either a flipper (retainer with a tooth attached) or just a temporary crown. The oral surgeon was pushing the temporary crown, but the dentist was pushing the flipper. After doing some research, DH finally decided on the flipper because he knows some people that have done the temporary crown and have had the implant fail because they put too much load on the implant before it was ready. With this being DH's front tooth, he didn't trust himself with not accidentally biting down on it. The problem with both of these solutions though is that it is just temporary until the implant is ready for the permanent crown, and our insurance won't cover either of them. So we also decided at this point to put off the surgery as long as possible since the tooth wasn't bothering DH at all and who knows how long he has been living with it without even knowing about it. Plus, if we put off the permanent crown until January, then we can get the insurance to cover more of the total procedure.

So we put decided to put off the implant procedure until August. DH was doing just fine until about 2 weeks ago when he started having some pain around the tooth area and we discovered that he had an infection. He called the dentist and was put on an antibiotic, scheduled an appointment to have an impression done of his teeth for the flipper and rescheduled the implant date for last Thursday. I think that when the dentist drilled into the tooth trying to fix what he thought was a cavity, it helped to further the decay along and expose the tooth to a higher risk of infection. Luckily the antibiotics worked great and the infection quickly went away and stayed away until he had the surgery done last week.

Wednesday evening we had an early birthday dinner for DH since he wouldn't be up to eating much on his birthday which was 2 days after his surgery. Thursday afternoon I went with DH to the oral surgeon and less than an hour later we were on our way home again - with an implant and a flipper instead of a front tooth. The oral surgeon had someone from one of the implant companies there observing the procedure, and she was quite impressed with the surgeon's work and kept commenting and complimenting him throughout the procedure. The surgeon did find some bone deformation after he pulled the tooth, indicating that the infection was starting to affect the bone around the tooth as well.

Before picture
So now it's on to life without a front tooth. DH has been healing great and only tooth pain medication for the first couple of days. The gum still has stitches in it and is still healing, but DH hasn't had any complications with it so far and he looks and talks normally with the flipper in place. Unfortunately, the way his teeth are aligned in his mouth, he is not able to eat with the flipper in and has to pull it out whenever he wants to eat something. When he takes the flipper out, it completely changes how he looks and he talks with a lisp. And we are still planning on waiting until January to get the permanent crown - which means 7 months of life with a flipper...
After picture (with the flipper in)
After picture (without the flipper)