To begin, I strongly suggest googling the proper names for different teeth because if you don’t know their names you might get a little lost.
Secondly, a quick history about my teeth so there is no confusion on what I am having done, and why I went through the situations that I did.
When I was a baby, I had a very bad bacterial infection which I was hospitalized for. I am fine, but they had to pump me with a multitude of antibiotics in order to fight the infection. One of these medications was a type called tetracycline’s. For those of you that do not know, or have never read the side effects on a antibiotic prescription bottle, some can cause discolouration of teeth.
Tetracycline’s are not meant to be given to children under the age of nine because it can cause “blackening of teeth.”
My teeth were not black, thankfully, but they did come in very discoloured, they were not a harsh yellow colour but they were stained and uneven. That is just one issue I had.
When I was around 7 and my baby teeth were falling out and my adult teeth were growing in we noticed that two teeth in particular were not showing up but didn’t think anything of it because I was young. It wasn’t until I had to have an X-ray done that my dentist told myself and my mom that my incisors didn’t exist. I had them as baby teeth but the ‘buds’ for the adult teeth did not form. Therefore when my adult teeth came in, I would be missing two teeth.
My mother panic’d, and the dentist explained that it was actually very common and it was hereditary. To this day we are still unsure if it is in fact hereditary because no one in my family, that we are aware of has this same issue.
Skip to when I am 12. I am still young enough that my smile is not very concerning to people because it just looks like a young kids smile, where things aren’t perfect and they can look a little weird. My teeth were straight, but my top teeth were very spaced. I had a gap in my from teeth and gaps throughout all the others. My canines had shifted and took up the space that my incisors should have been and in turn my bicuspids moves as well. All in all, I had spaces between all my top teeth and I kind of looked like a version of the vampires in LOST BOYS.
12 years old rolls around and I need braces, I also need a cosmetic dentist to figure out how I am going to get teeth to look more normal. We originally wanted a female cosmetic dentist because we felt that there would probably be a better connection with me because they would understand the need and want for it to look cosmetically pleasing other than just ‘done correctly.’
We could not find a female dentist that had lots of experience with my type of situation so we went with an orthodontist that I liked a lot and also had the cosmetic dentist in the same building.
We discussed bridges, and crowns, and implants, and dentures, things I didn’t quite understand as a child, but we came to the conclusion to put in two implants so I could keep as much of my regular teeth as possible.
12/13 years old I had braces. I only had top braces because my bite was almost perfect and my bottom teeth were straight. As the gaps were closed I had a temporary tooth called a “flipper” placed on a bracket that just kind of hung there but gave the illusion that I was not missing teeth. I was not allowed to bite into anything out of concern that the teeth might break off, but eventually I discovered that I could bite into some things without the teeth coming off.
Fast forward to sixteen and my braces came off, for a few days I had a removable retainer with teeth on them so I could pop them on and off whenever I needed to sleep and the wouldn’t irritate my gums until I got a temporary retainer on the back of my teeth with the teeth attached.
In the summer, I had my implants placed, a gum and bone graft, and I spent a good amount of time healing. I was swollen, I was bruised, I had two black eyes, and I was on a soft food diet. Once I was healed enough my teeth were placed back on the wire and I went about my life, but I was not fully healed from the bruising for about a month.
When discussing having my implants made, I got an infection on my left implant that left me unable to have them made for another month.
Temporary implants were glued onto the abutment but I had issues with my gums. The implant is silver and you could see it shining through my gums making them look dark and purplish rather than pink.
Another gum graft was done to fix that problem, and it did work slightly but not to the extent that I had wanted.
When I finally had my implants made and screwed in permanently, I was very upset about the fact that they were not as high as my other teeth, meaning the tops sat lower on the gum line than my other making them look shorter. Because of this it also highlighted how dark my gum was compared to my other teeth.
At seventeen years old I told the Dr. that I wanted them higher and I was told “Well we can’t all have what we want.” And that the reason they couldn’t be made to sit higher was because my implant was in the way.
I spent the next six years not completely loving my smile, but happy that I had teeth. Children asked me why my gums were black where my implants were, I saw other people wit the same issue as me have their teeth look great and I cried about it a lot.
Around the age of 20 I also noticed that my implant crowns did not match the colour of my other teeth, they were darker and more grey than my other teeth which made me very self conscious.
At age 23, working full time and starting my career I decided to do something about the discolouration on my teeth and my implants.
I had moved to Nova Scotia and sought out a Dr. that was very well known and very good at what he did and voiced my concerns, he told me that he could fix them and that if I wasn’t happy with results he could not charge me more to fix the issues I still had, which was true. I paid the agreed upon amount for my veneers and implants and not a penny more when I had issues.
My Dr. was an amazing man.
I decided that because I wanted the discolouration of my teeth to go away, and that I wouldn’t be 100% satisfied with just having my implants fixed because I didn’t like the colour of my top teeth, I decided to get veneers.
Six veneers, and two implants, eight teeth in total. My two front teeth, my canines and my bicuspids would have veneers because those are the teeth you see when I smile.
Lets start with the process.
The first thing that happens is you have TONS of pictured taken of your teeth, you tell them what you like and don’t like about your teeth and come up with a plan to get the smile that you want. I personally did not want to change the shape of my teeth because I wanted them to look as natural as possible and did not have problems with the shape. However he did address some things in my smile that he felt would enhance my teeth if I had them changed. I had a slight indent on the side of one of my teeth he wanted to fix, and he said I should round out the edge because they were very square looking.
I said that was fine so long as they looked like my own teeth.
Then prep began, if you are thinking about getting veneers you would know that they have to shave down some of your enamel in order for the veneer to fit and look more natural. I was offered to be put asleep but I needed to drive home so I was numbed instead.
They started by removing my crowns, my implants would stay in place and only my crown and abutment would be changed. They could not get my right incisor off so I had to come in for another appointment to have it basically destroyed. I was given a temporary for left incisor that was very dark and grey because of the abutment underneath but it was only for one day.
I came in the next day and had the right crown removed, then they numbed me up and started shaving down my teeth. Your teeth will look very yellow when they shave them down.
Once that was completed impressions were taken and my teeth were fitted for a temporary veneer.
Temporary veneers DO NOT look anything like the final product. In my case it was a thin piece of plastic. Not resin, it was plastic, and it was all one piece. So it is almost like having in a very thin mouth guard at all times and I HATED it.
I was allowed to eat right away but I was warned not to bite into anything tough. I opted to not bite into anything for the two weeks I had the temporary in out of fear of breaking it. Within eight hours, while eating pasta, it broke.
My bicuspid, my canine and half of my incisor broke off, and while I was able to just place it back in place, if I ate it would pop off. I had to have another dentist glue it back on a few days later because I had gone home to Ontario to visit my boyfriend.
The temporary broke in the same place again the next day while eating timbit and I had it reglued again. After that it did not break until I went in to have my veneers placed.
While having the temporary on, my teeth looked very boxy, almost like dentures and I was not happy with them. My teeth were very sensitive to hot and cold and where my implant abutment was my teeth looked darker than the rest.
The worst part of it was, because of the numbing, I was very swollen for about a week.
Because of the swelling I couldn’t smile normally and I did not look good. I took ibuprofen and iced my face for a week until the swelling went away completely.
The good thing about it was that I was not in pain. There was minimal to no pain which I believe is common for most people. The temporary was shaped for my teeth, but there were pieces that would overlap onto my gums and some placed were uneven, basically it didn’t need to be perfect because it wasn’t the final product.
Keep in mind, the temporary is glued onto the front of my teeth and was shaved down at the back so my bite wasn’t compromised. If you have ever worn a mouthguard you would know that you ‘suck’ on it to remove the saliva and have it press tighter against your teeth. Even though the piece was glued to my teeth is still felt as though something foreign against my teeth so I had a habit of ‘sucking’ on it in an attempt to press it against my teeth even thought they already were. Because of this habit I had I could taste the glue, and it doesn’t taste good. Also make sure that you use mouth wash, you can brush the back of your teeth but the front are covered, but liquid will still get between the teeth, under the temp and linger on the plastic. I will not smell the best.
When I went to have my veneers placed I was ecstatic to have my temporary removed. But I was also nervous that I wasn’t going to like the final result. It was taken off and I was so happy but the cold air hitting my teeth hurt like hell.
They showed me my veneers and my crowns and placed them on my teeth before cementing them so I could make sure I was happy with them. After looking at them in the office I asked to go outside and see them in natural light, and I was very very happy with the results.
However I was not entirely happy with my crowns, they were a slightly different colour than my veneers because rather than being a thin piece of porcelain, its a solid chuck of it. Therefore it will be more pigmented than the veneers. I also was not entirely happy with the shape.
Once I expressed I was happy with the veneers, I went back in the have them cemented. They wanted to numb me again but I requested that they didn’t so I wouldn’t swell and I could see the teeth with my natural smile.
They had to place a somewhat rubber cloth behind my teeth and held it in place with a metal covering that went on my molars. It hurt and tugged on my molars but after a few minutes I got used to it.
My teeth had to be extremely dry to the rubber thing in my mouth went and surrounded my teeth and kept my lips from falling down and wetting them with saliva.
This hurt very badly. The cold air, and lack of lubrication caused my teeth to feel like they were just sitting in ice cream and I couldn’t move them. They were so sensitive.
I understood then why they wanted to numb me a bit but I kept my complaint to myself because I didn’t want them to take it as a reason to numb me up.
Then I had them cemented on. This did not hurt, what did hurt was the scrapping of my gums. When they are placed they have to remove access cement that gets on your other teeth and gums. They scrape with a metal tool to get it off and it caused my gums to bleed a lot. Once they were placed they had to make sure that I could floss between them, and they did have to use a small piece of sandpaper in order to get in between the teeth and make sure a gap was big enough to fit a piece of floss between them without creating a noticeable gap. This hurt as well.
Once everything was deemed okay I had my bite tested and cement removed from the backs of my teeth to make sure I didn’t touch my bottom teeth to my top.
WARNING : If you choose not get veneers on all your teeth. Glue and cement can get on your natural teeth, so don’t panic if they start sanding down your other teeth with a drill or something. They’re trying to get the cement off.
Once they were done I was shown them again and I was happy, but I was also bleeding so I didn’t get the full effect until the next day when everything had calmed down.
SOMETHING YOU NEED TO KNOW!! When you chose the colour of the veneer, discuss with your Dr. the fact that your veneers will slightly change colour once they are cemented on. They will pick up some of the colour of the teeth underneath so just keep that in mind and discuss with your Dr. about it.
Since I wasn’t completely happy with my crowns, they brought in the cosmetic tech to look at my veneers and speak to me about the issues and took more impressions.
The next couple days my gums were irritated and hurt from the abuse they had endured but it went down after a few days. I spent the next couple days staring at my teeth in different lighting to make sure I was 100% happy and I was.
My teeth are still slightly more sensitive than they were with my original teeth but it is only to very cold drinks if I swish them between my teeth.
I had an appointment scheduled to go back and have my crowns put on and I was finally happy with the final result.
All in all my experience was pleasant but I did deal with things I was not expecting. I encountered things that I could not find on the internet and went through many moments of doubt. But I am pleased to say I am finally happy with my smile.
If you are looking to have veneers done it is not something to take lightly because you do have to compromise your regular tooth structure but I’ve always believed that if you are not happy with something, you either learn to love it or you change it.
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