I had missing teeth for years
Saved By Dental Implants: I Lost All My Teeth!
Real person’s story:
For me, everything was fine with my smile until I hit 30. When I had a difficult pregnancy, where the baby was taking all my nourishment, it deprived my mouth of all the healthy nutrients it needed.
I was diagnosed with pyorrhea, which was a hugely aggressive form of gum disease, which led to all my teeth falling out. As a new mother and a youngish woman, this was completely devastating.
See: What is pyorrhea? What are the symptoms?
I never knew there was anything I could do
I grew up in a small town, I had lived in that small town for most of my life and unfortunately, there were no glorious tooth replacement options available to me. I was recommended dentures, which I have had to wear for the last 20 years of my life.
These days with the rise of the internet, social media and adverts I learned all about dental implants and how they could act just like normal teeth. I was excited at the thought of having my smile back. That was until I went for my consultation.
Because it had been decades without any teeth, the bone in my jaw had depleted so significantly that my mouth was no longer in a healthy state to withstand implants, which would mean they would fail if I did not undergo pre-implant procedures like gum regeneration and bone grafts beforehand.
Read more about the consequences of missing teeth here, which a dental implant practice in Surrey explains particularly well – you should know these warnings!
I know I wish I did all those years ago because, in the end, I’ve spent all this money on replacing my dentures and now additional procedures on top of my implant treatment.
But by that point, I just wanted my teeth back.
Finding the perfect practice for me
When I was 55, I was sick of dentures and sick of being embarrassed.
My husband and I had just moved to Dorset, which gave me more options in terms of better private practices in the area.
And believe it or not, thanks to the Internet, searching for a cosmetic dentist Dorset was easy, after a quick Google search I quickly found Dorset Dental Implant Clinic.
After being really pleased with their reviews and implant before and after photos I booked a free consultation with their implant dentist to get the ball rolling.
How much I had to pay
I had two options, I could pay for each individual implant, where you are charged separately for the implant itself and then the abutment crown that fixes on to it.
There are other cheaper restorative bits you can do like dental bridges, but in this case, I needed a full mouth reconstruction and All-on-Four was suggested to me, where I would only need four implants in the mouth, which I could have snap-on cosmetic dentures attached to (better than any other dentures I’ve had before – they were like real teeth). This considerably reduced the cost.
In the end, with all the extra treatments I spent £19,000 for a new smile in just one day.