A Mouth Full of Failure: Here Are Some of the Many Reasons Being a 47 Year Old with Dentures Fucking Sucks
One of the weirdest parts of having dentures is the tiny woman who now lives inside my mouth
Before I got my dentures, I never spent too much time wondering what the experience would be like. I knew that it would be painful and uncomfortable but I hoped that at some point, maybe months or even years or decades down the road, it would become less painful and less uncomfortable.
One of my coping strategies for surviving an exceedingly challenging life involves not obsessing over the many things about my life that make is such a challenge.
One of those things, needless to say, involves getting dentures at forty-six that I cannot begin to pay for but that have become an unfortunate necessity due to the horrible nature of my teeth.
In hindsight I’m glad that I did not spend the weeks and months leading up to having all of my teeth removed and replaced with a complicated apparatus thinking about the procedure itself and the aftermath.
It would have been painful but it also wouldn’t have done me any good. So I’m glad that I spent the last few weeks where I could eat and sleep and talk normally, without practice, concentration and determination living my old life and not obsessing about the one looming over the horizon.
Because here’s the thing: while I believe my dental surgeon at Affordable Dentures and Implants did a fine job and that my recovery seems to be going relatively smoothly being a broke forty-seven year old with dentures sucks.
It just fucking sucks. Good lord does it ever fucking suck.
My stupid brain and my body both understandably refuse to accept that I paid someone in the area of five thousand dollars to have all my gnarly, broken, brittle, cavity-riddled teeth removed so that they could be replaced by fakes.
My brain and body can be excused for their CONSISTENT stupidity because paying someone thousands of dollars to undergo four hours of dental trauma is kind of crazy when you think about it.
Oh sure, the rational, objective part of my brain knows that I got dentures because my teeth had gotten very bad and I had reached a crisis point where taking extreme action like having my teeth removed and replaced with dentures became a matter of supreme urgency.
But I would be lying to you if I didn’t look in the mirror literally every day and flinch at the sight of my mouth without teeth but with a complicated network of sores and bumps and holes.
No part of my brain has accepted, even a little, that what’s happening in my mouth is unfortunate, sure, and could have been prevented with better dental care, but that it is, in the long run, a responsible, mature decision that, god willing, will someday result in me having fake teeth that feel natural and strong instead of the mouth full of failure that I had before my teeth were removed.
Granted, I STILL have a mouth full of failure that makes me feel bad about myself and the life that I’ve led whenever I see it bare but now I don’t have any teeth in that mouth of failure and also I’ve somehow moved even further from ever being able to get out of debt.
There are so many things about my dentures that make me miserable. For example I need to take them out and wash them every time I eat. Otherwise bits of food and detritus and other junk might get under the denture and the skin and infect it.
And every time I clean my dentures I am afforded another opportunity to take a long, hard look at myself in the mirror and regret all that led me to to this place of desperation and despair.
I also still drool a fair amount because in many ways I am like a baby who hasn’t quite figured out how to talk or breathe or sleep with my new teeth.
Little children get new teeth when they lose the old ones. Stunted man-children like myself get new teeth when they’ve done such a terrible job with the ones they were given that spending thousands to have them painfully removed becomes the only sane, logical choice.
Every time I try to eat something for the first time since I got my dentures I play a depressing little game called “Will Nathan be able to eat this? And will Nathan WANT to eat this?”
The answer, unfortunately, is often “no.”
You never appreciate the brilliant design and usefulness of teeth until you either lose them or decide to give them up. I think a lot about the divine architecture of teeth these days because I often have to chew something four or five times whereas I would only have to chew once back when I had my old choppers.
It took me weeks to get used to eating with my new teeth and it turns out that if you don’t eat for a very long time you get very hungry and also lose weight. I think I lost about fifteen pounds before I started eating regularly.
Before I got my dentures I felt very old and broke and also like a failure. Those feelings have only intensified since the procedure.
When I was a kid I remember watching a Fixodent ad where a sassy senior brags about how she never thought she’d be able to eat corn on the cob with her new teeth but that with Fixodent all things are possible and thinking how sad this woman’s life must be.
I now DREAM of being able to eat corn on the cob. Or open a bag with my teeth or any of the thousands of things I took for granted before my dentures.
At this point you may be wondering why I am going into so much humiliating detail about my experience. Am I merely venting because I obviously need to OR am I trying to snag the prestigious cover of Depressed Premature Dentures Wearer Monthly?
The answer is probably a little from column A and a little from column B.
In conclusion, take good care of your teeth and they will take care of you. I did not take good care of my teeth, so my teeth shanked me in the small of my back with a razor in retribution, metaphorically speaking.
Don’t end up like me! It’s not too late! And if it is too late, my God, I’m so sorry, as I REALLY know what you’re going through and just how much it fucking sucks.
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