Technology is awesome. six years ago one of my teeth shattered while I was eating a bowl of fruit loops. It totally blew. I had never had a cavity before and POW!, one of my teeth was half gone. Well, after putting it off for a few weeks I finally decided to go to a dentist to see about getting it fixed, since it was cutting the inside of my cheek and was starting to really ache like hell. Since I had terrible dental insurance, the dentist presented me with two options: “for $30 I can remove the remaining tooth or for $3000 I can fix it by doing a root canal or a bridge or some shit like that” (note: I think I started paraphrasing somewhere in there). Either way, with a horrible amount of debt from my first year of college, I figured I’d go with the $30 option. He failed to mention the part where I wasn’t going to be under general anesthesia and he was going to pull the tooth out with the same pliers I’d use to remove a stripped out screw from the wall. That was some of the worst pain ever. I still have nightmares about it.

Fast-forward four years. I finally graduated from college. I had a good job as a computer engineer. I bought a car to replace the piece of crap I drove throughout college. I was doing well. So I decided I’d replace the missing tooth and hopefully ruin my chances of ever looking like a carnie again. My sister-in-law had already explained to me that what I really wanted was to have a dental implant (Finally, I can enjoy eating once again!). But if I was going to go to the trouble of drilling a screw into my jaw, I might as well make sure my teeth were aligned before I had the implant done. So I suffered with braces (both top and bottom) for over two years. It was a real pain in the ass. And then I the surgery where the screw was placed in my jaw. For six months after, I had to wear a retainer to keep the space open for the tooth while I waited for my jaw to heal. Next, I had my gums cut open and a metal cap (titanium!) placed in the screw and let the gums heal for a month. Finally, a couple weeks ago I had the tooth put in. Here’s the before and after.

before

after

after (with that crazy look in my eyes)