Nice to meet you. I’m a 44 year old male and I live in Belgium. I have a nice job and enjoy my daily life with my family and friends. I’m feeling healthy and strong. But I have a “small” issue with one of my front teeth (number 21) and some crooked bottom teeth 🙂 It looks like I’ll need both: implant and braces at adult age… And I’m writing a blog about it.

Please note I’m not natively speaking English so you might encounter some strange grammatical text on this blog. Sorry about that!

So what is going on with my dental health?

As a child (+/- 12y) my parents wanted me to start wearing braces. Even though I didn’t like the idea, I was sent to an orthodontist. My front teeth did not align, and my bottom teeth needed to be fixed too. Conclusion: “You will need braces.”. At that very moment I didn’t know he was talking about METAL WIRED BRACKETS UP & BOTTOM. Full option.

I didn’t like the idea to start wearing braces when I was 12 and still today at age 44 I would like to avoid getting braces. Personally I think it looks strange, let alone on a male person of adult age. But OK, time will tell.

As soon as I noticed my parents talking with the orthodontist, to make appointments and discussing the treatment plan, I started freaking out. I really didn’t want it. I would feel ashamed, ugly, puzzled, insecure, whatever… Long story short: I was able to convince my parents not to install the brackets and metal wires.

Even though I was able to convince my parents, the orthodontist was able to convince my parents too. I ended up wearing a Hawley-Retainer and had to wear it 24h/24h and 7 days a week. I think this was even worse than having to wear fixed brackets. It was difficult to speak. And I never got used to it. You already guess what happened? I didn’t wear the device.

As soon as I left home I took the device out of my mouth and it disappeared in that blue plastic box. After school I quickly inserted the device again. At night it disappeared again in the plastic box. This went on and on for many months, appointment after appointment, until my orthodontist started questioning: “Are you really wearing the retainer 24/24? I don’t see any results. It is important you wear the retainer. It will take forever to fix that front tooth”. I always told him that I did… He made some changes over and over gain. The wire started to hurt. I think this is the exact moment in my life things went wrong with my top front tooth. Both my orthodontist and parents gave up on the treatment and I was released from wearing the device.

During/after the Covid pandemic I managed to stay “safe”. Never experienced too much trouble with my health but things started changing little bit somewhere around start 2019.

January 2019 I went to my dentist. She told me one of my top front teeth was dead. She asked me if I could remember any reason why this tooth died. I explained her about the Hawley Retainer experience. Probably the root of that tooth experienced too much stress during the treatment at age +12 ending up in a lost tooth. I knew something was going on with that tooth. The color started changing and it is starting to twist more and more.

Result: I needed a root canal procedure. I postponed this procedure a few times but decided to go for it. I made an appointment with an endodontologist and got that root canal procedure done in March 2020. Hoping things would settle down. The Covid situation started and forgot about that tooth.

During a yearly checkup in Juni 2021 my dentist reminded me again about that front tooth. She told me to look into it again because the root canal procedure didn’t work out as expected and the situation starts to turn out risky for my other neighbor teeth. She told me to replace the tooth with a dental implant as soon as possible.

Still I can’t believe I end up in this situation. I have made a new appointment with another dentist on the 9th of November 2021. This dentist is working closely together with an endodontologist / orthodontist / … I hope to get a second opinion about this situation.

I still hope I’m experiencing a bad dream but I decided to go all the way. Depending on the outcome of my appointment on November 9th I will do my best to fix the issues with my teeth. If I need braces I will do it. If I need a tooth implant I will do it. So I’m pretty nervous about this. This is the reason why I started this blog. I want to share every single step I will have to go through to inform you about to positives and the negatives, the good and the bad. Hoping to inform those interested, experiencing same issues that have explained above.

Oh and please let me know about your experiences, because I might share them on this blog too!