Sebastian

[bobquasit]

It's bad.

His tooth has been capped, or something, with composite, but it's much weaker than the natural tooth. He can't bite anything firm like an apple or even a candy bar for the rest of his life. He'll have problems with it for the rest of his life, and will probably end up needing a root canal, crown, veneer, perhaps even a complete replacement.

My heart is broken. And how are we going to keep him from ever eating anything crunchy? They told him he can't even eat cookies or crunchy chicken nuggets!

Comments

[audacian.livejournal.com]

Can't they just give him a replacement in the first instance so he doesn't have to keep getting it replaced and whatnot? Also, can't he just.. not use that tooth to chew? Everything might have to be cut a bit smaller, but he's still got the rest of his mouth to chew on. He seems like a smart enough kid to do that.

[unquietsoul5.livejournal.com]

Most likely reasons for why they can't :

Insurance. Many won't cover all that for someone his age, if any at all. Some will insist you have to suffer thru 2 or 3 composites before you can get a cap. Some won't agree to it in a child at all.

I've been there, and I know what it's like. I have 4 capped teeth, and an overpriced, badly designed and painful to wear partial plate for missing teeth.

[audacian.livejournal.com]

Oh, yuck. I know someone who has a totally fake tooth (I think her permanent one didn't grow in?) but I think you're right about age - I don't believe she got it until she was a teenager.

I have a tooth repaired via composite, and it's just a small part of a lower canine so it's not really in a prone position. I feel bad for the kid who can't bite into an apple :/

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Poor wee soul....

I broke a front upper incisor when I was seven - there wasn't enough to cap, so out it came. For the next twelve years or so I'd a plate (which I soon discovered I could click at people, or move round to make it look as if I'd a fang growing out of the side of my mouth).

Well, I say a plate: between eight and about sixteen, I must've broken it twice a year: apples and other hard food, yes, but also falls and the odd fight (small, smart and bespectacled made for an easy target).

In my early twenties, my mouth had stopped growing (no jokes, please), and I finally had a bridge - topping off the tooth on either side with a crown.

This meant that for more than two decades I could just forget about it, and I rediscovered steak, apples and crusty French bread (I'd never had to give them up, just be very, very careful).

Eventually wear and tear cut in, and the crowns needed replacing. I had another few years with steel pins in the crowned teeth, but the less tooth and the more metal, the weaker the remaining tooth, and a sort of slow motion vicious circle ensued.

So, almost forty years after breaking the tooth, I went back to having a plate: technology's come on, though, and it's only broken the once in three years.

It sounds pretty awful, listed like that, but - you know - it's not that bad, and overall I've been able to more or less forget about it for years at a time.