Teeth and the world that revolved around them
Today and tomorrow, I go in for extensive work to my teeth. This has been put off for a long long time because of money and time but finally I’m biting the bullet and getting it done. I am one of those people who took lots of tetracycline when I was young because I had chronic colds, the result is that it ruined my teeth. The irony is that one of my early careers was a paralegal working with an attorney who defended American Cyanamid – creator of tetracycline. We hired an expert witness, a pediatric orthodontist who was doing experimental work with porcelain veneers and he used me as a model for his expert witness photographs 26 years ago. The veneers on the bottom of my teeth are original and way old, almost dissolved and yellow. The top veneers I had replaced by the San Francisco State Dentist School 16 years ago. One of the two front ones has cracked.
Finally at a mega cost, I am going in today to begin the costly replacement of all of these veneers – 19 in total – approximately $20,000 out of pocket. My natural teeth were stained and weakened by prolonged tetracycline use. Despite all this, my dental insurance considers this elective, cosmetic insurance.
