#Dental trauma

[gallusrostromegalus]

HERSCHEL BROKE YOUR TOOTH?!

My Special Little Ham Man is 42lbs of concentrated power of friendship, which he uses to give himself unnatural propulsion powers, and launches himself at anyone that so much as looks at him with extreme joy, like a short, hairy weeping angel.

Anyway, it's been an emotionally intense two weeks for Herschel because I got spayed and couldn't have him in my lap and we also closed on a house, so from his perspective I was suddenly very ill and refused to snuggle with him and I kept VANISHING off to parts unknown. Very distressing. So two nights ago, when I was satisfied that my stitches had healed and let him jump up for Lap Time, he was so overcome with joy that he put too much juice into the bounce and smacked his concrete-reinforced little noggin directly into my mouth, and broke the root of my right incisor.

(He'd do it again)

Anyway, while I am largely financially stable and have dental insurance, the surgery and move mean the family is a little strapped for cash and the dental insurance doesn't cover much, so if you've got a spare dollar to toss at my Ko-Fi, I'd extremely appreciate it. (today's date is 2/7/2023, so people don't feel compelled to donate next year or something if this ends up in circulation.)

[marzipanandminutiae]

This never gets brought up enough in "why did people used to be thinner discussions". A SIGNIFICANT PERCENTAGE OF ADULTS HAD NO BLOODY TEETH. And a lot of the food tasted like garbage, of course they didn't eat much!

So, in the kindest way possible, I'd like to unpack this. Because I feel like there are some very common fallacies here.

When/where exactly are we talking about? 1780s Mediterranean France? 1960s rural Australia? New York City, 1857, upper-class neighborhood? It's possible to make some time/ place generalities when speaking broadly about cultural trends, but a lot of people talk about a nebulous Back Then so nonspecifically as to be meaningless.

My (limited) research has turned up evidence of preemptive- ie not immediately medically indicated -tooth removal and replacement with dentures, as a rare but not unheard-of practice, among young adults primarily in the UK, Australia, and Atlantic Canada around the 1920s-1970s, mostly in rural and/or working-class communities. Usually with existing tooth decay and expectations of further issues in the future. With some mentions from the US, Denmark, and the Netherlands, same time frame. So the question would then be "were people thinner in those communities at that time? if so, how much? and what role, if any, does voluntary toothlessness play in thinness if we take into account food insecurity and physical labor?"

2. People weren't necessarily thinner "back then." There are a myriad of factors that conspire to give this impression nowadays, from survivorship bias leading smaller clothes and shoes to be disproportionately represented in museums, to photo editing in eras where many of us are now unaware that it existed, to the prevalence of celebrity images over pictures of ordinary people, spotty record-keeping on the subject, improved nutrition in the modern day, beauty standards that caused people to have unhealthy but celebrated body weights, and so on. Further, the so-called "obesity epidemic" only dates back to the 1970s even among those who accept it uncritically, and the adoption of the (flawed) BMI system led many people to be newly classified as overweight who previously were not. I highly recommend historian Kenna Libes' excellent Instagram, Stout Style History, for images of larger women in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

3. You can still eat solid food with dentures (albeit sometimes with difficulties). And a big part of this whole cultural practice was the "replace with dentures" step. For the even smaller subset of patients I've read about who did it for aesthetic reasons, that was the whole point- like capping teeth today. So that's not necessarily an impediment to eating, and therefore to eating-related weight gain/maintenance.

4. Many people in many eras liked their food, or at least some of it. I know the food in mid-20th-century Britain- a nexus of voluntary tooth removal in my research, and I'm guessing where you're from due to the use of "bloody" -is notorious now, and every period and place has folks who aren't fans of some common dishes. But it's hard to believe that these people (especially after first one war with rationing and then another) were turning up their noses enough to lose significant weight, or maintain non-genetic extremely low body weights unrelated to physical labor, sports, etc.. Tastes change- in my own country, the USA, I have to believe that SOMEBODY liked those fluorescent Jell-O salads, or there wouldn't be so many recipes for them.

I hope this doesn't come off too critical or combative; I just had many Thoughts on the premise of your ask.

[cipheramnesia]

Just can't stop playing this over and over again at night.

[9e111]

DEVISER PODCAST SPOILERS

sometimes a family is a fancy meat computer and his beloved uncanny son (+ a dog if you're lucky)

[planetary]

oh im so mad i have a cavity in my tooth and like what the fuck i brush my teeth twice or sometimes three times a day i literally Have to or i cant relax enough to sleep i floss after eating like anything and before i brush i have special mouthwash i use in the middle of the day too i am Obsessive about my teeth. and i get a fucking cavity. WHAT IS THE POINT GRRR IM SO SICK OF DENTAL WORK two abcesses a wisdom tooth and that whole debacle with my stupid fuck of a dentist shoving a broken piece of my tooth INTO MY SINUS CAVITY and now i have to get a FILLING maybe multiple bc who knows there could be others LIKE wtf. just take them all out at this point whatever omfg.

AND MY DENTAL INSURANCE DOESNT COVER SHIT so this will be probably like a thousand dollars again hopefully not more and what else? yeah i cant stop thinking of that fucking episode of CatDog where they went to the dentist because when i first saw that episode like 10 years ago i got so fucking mad i still have a screenshot of me bitching about it. heres an excerpt from the episode sypnosis

“When the dentist opens Dog's mouth and examines it, he finds his mouth perfect, which surprises Cat. Then, he checks Cat's mouth and notices that his mouth is unclean and loaded with all sorts of decay. The dentist scans CatDog through an X-ray and discovers that whatever damage Dog does to his teeth will affect Cat's teeth and vice versa.”

so thats fucked right now let me go transcribe the screenshot i have from 10 years ago. ok heres my thoughts from 2014

“before i send this i would just like to say that ive been watching a lot of CatDog recently and it's on now and im SOrry. but it needs to be said. have you ever seen catdog? it was on TV about ten years ago and it's about this cat and this dog that were attached to each other. ive got some concerns about it. the show isn't ever fair to Cat. especially in this one episode, where CatDog goes to the dentist. Cat eats very good food and Dog eats literally shit. Cat brushes and flosses after each meal and Dog is still eating shit. but because of some logic that has no scientific backing at all, whatever one does to his teeth affects the other. so Dog just gets to be a shit-eater and be rewarded while Cat is punished no matter how hard he tries. its just... so unfair. you get where im going with this?”

LIKE DO YOU GET IT IM LITERALLY CAT RN AND IDK WHO DOG IS BUT WHEN I FUCKING GET THEM IM KILLING THEM sorry this is long but im not putting it under a readmore you followed me so you agree to see me complain on the dash. you love it. I HATE TEETH

[pomefiore-visitor]

Fellow odontophiliac 💏 what are your thoughts on braces?? -cobwebbedcat

I LOOOVEE BRACES. so much. sooo much it drives me actually crazy. i used to have braces myself, and there is smth thats appealing to me with like. rocks back and forth. say for example trey or lilia having braces and needing to get them tightened and then complaining about the soreness after. Also the visual of someone having rubber bands with their braces makes me go nuts crazy. they kinda look like little fangs. which is fucking hot !!! tbqh !!!

[thereissomethingunderthestairs]

Does anyone else have typical nightmares but you like them? i love dreams where im falling…. ever since i fell asleep in a bush plane over katmai national park and the pilot smacked my leg to wake me up to and i woke up to us being vertical in the air parallel to a snowy mountain i haven’t been afraid of falling dreams

I still have other common nightmares like i have teeth falling out dreams but then they get put back in wrong so i have a mouth full of tooth roots or someone puts a live wasp or a tiny crowbar in one of my empty gum sockets

[thediktatortot]

Im someone with extreme dental anxiety because I've experienced multiple traumatic dental appointments in my life at a very young age, and I absolutely hate when dentists treat me like a child or tell me the reasons I choose my options or the reason I tell them things is because of pain and they completely dismiss me.

I fucking hate dentists.

I have jaw problems that causes me to be unable to open my jaw all the way and this can cause me to have extreme pain during long dental visits and never, not once, has a dentists even given me options for helping with this, even if asked.

On top of that, I have extreme anxiety while at dentist offices because my primary dentist actually abused me during my visits and my parents didn't know about it until my fourth visit.

Sorry for trauma dumping, I just left my appointment and I'm so angry.

[bunny-bunny]

I have a dentist appointment tomorrow morning and I just wanna disappear

[draciformes]

Hey so as someone with a lot of dental repairs and fillings done, I just recently learned something I wish I knew a lot earlier. if you have fillings that break often when they're only a few years old or less, it's very likely that you are grinding your teeth when you sleep and you need to ask your dentist about getting a nighttime mouth guard.

I've had several dentists and probably over a dozen fillings done and lots of decay and lots of trauma but no dentist ever did any substantial questioning beyond 'do you drink a lot of soda?' or 'do you grind your teeth at night?' and it's like no, and I don't think so, (how would I know?? I'm asleep??) and they'd be like oh hm. Weird. And then just do the fillings. but this is the first doctor to say that it's very likely you're grinding your teeth and it's a very common thing to have, I will make you a custom fit mouth guard, fillings should not break this quickly and they should last for around 10 years.

If you have a lot of anxiety, drink a lot of caffeine, take stimulants or ssris, smoke or drink, or have a neurological disease you're more likely to grind. So as someone with a lot of dental work and a lot of trauma/anxiety I figure this may help other people to know because if I did it sure would have saved a lot of hassle and money and trauma I had to deal with

[thestarsandstones]

toothless assistance please

Hey, things are tough, and we had our teeth pulled and put on denture waiting list 9 months ago, and will likely be like this for another 6-12 months. Medical and life expenses hit, and essentials are expensive enough without a specialized diet for intestinal chronic illness, but making it essentially liquid is even worse and requiring a lot of extra cooking steps. As you can imagine, this transfam is unable to get through the end of the month and any help you can give is super appreciated. We are Sick, Tired, and broke and need your help! paypal or canadian interac transfer both go to stinger.d86@gmail.com

[h20]

A third tooth feels like it’s on its way towards breaking. Money would literally solve all of my problems and I have never seen as much money as I need to fix my teeth ever in my life and now it looks like I’ll have another one to add to the bill. Life is a joke

[sendmebacktomysecondlife]

the worst thing about having botched braces is literally everything being ruined completely in my mouth.

Most of my family said my smile was better. My overbite had not been fixed and now my lower jaw swings unnaturally to the left. My family complained I didn't have the same appetite, and that I chewed too loud. Due to the unnatural swing of my jaw and the fact that my right molars are now almost completely sideways, chewing like before braces is impossible with biting my tongue or cheeks or dislocating my jaw My mother complained about my new snaggled front tooth. I was given a permanent retainer without my consent or understanding of what it was and the glue is disintegrating. My gums were lasered after braces so far down I can't brush my bottom front teeth without discomfort. Two teeth were removing for "crowding" that created noticeable gaps after I had braces removed.

And yet my orthodontist never saw a single damn problem with my teeth doing any of this, and neither did my dentist! According to them, my teeth looked perfect, when they now had more problems then when I was young. So now it's thousands more dollars as an adult to get braces again to fix the damage done by Dr. fricking DingDong.

[monkeymeghan]

My anxiety today is the worst it’s been in three years. In January 2020 I experienced a bad trauma at the dentist. I had horrible ptsd and had to go back into intensive outpatient psychiatric care. I’ve known since then that I have a few cavities. Recently one tooth has been sore once in a while, but last night started hurting. I got so anxious just thinking about having to go to the dentist, but I went on my insurance website and found a few locations that accept my plan. I just called one and have an appointment next Monday. I’m fucking terrified. I texted my sister, though, and she is going to come with me. I’ve always had anxiety surrounding going to the dentist, but since my trauma it’s been horrible. I’ve been shaking all day, crying on and off, and almost started dissociating at one point. And it’s just been/going to be a week, when it rains it pours. My dad is having major surgery on Friday morning, and my mom has some stuff going on. I’m just feeling overwhelmed. But at least I was brave enough to make the appointment, I’ve put it off as long as I could.

[self-critical-automaton]

My dentist has literally traumatized me. I can't stand to be around her after what she did, and I'm now afraid of dentists in general. I lie awake thinking about it, unable to sleep at night.

I have tooth pain all the time, I have for like years now and a succession of incompetents have only made that worse. I used to face my endless appointments with weary resignation and a vague sense of pride at how little dentistry bothered me, but now I struggle to even call for an appointment.

I'm poor as shit but I have to pay for private appointments, even tho as a recipient of disability benefits I'm legally entitled to free dental care. Because I can only change my registered NHS dentist by switching to another NHS dentist, and not one in the city has been accepting new patients all year.

People have told me i should sue, but I'm so sick and exhausted all the time. I don't even have the energy to figure out if I have a legal case, or if I've left it to long already.

[normal-newt]

I love that I’ve gone from “it’s a new year things are gonna be okay” to “right well maybe I can go five minutes without needing to book an urgent GP appointment again” in less time than it takes to get through a medical waiting list here.