You must be joking

I lost a tooth. Really. A front tooth, well lateral incisor really... so the tooth right next to my front tooth. Saturday afternoon while driving in the van and talking to my sons in the back seat. I closed my mouth and when I did, I heard a CRACK as my teeth touched. . . and out it came. The tooth was broken at the gumline.

So Saturday night and Sunday and even Monday... I have been hibernating in the house. (Okay... Saturday and Sunday I spent pouting in the house)

Until today... I got a replacement... a temporary build up until January.

I don't have to lose the tooth (no extraction) The doc put a post into this previously root canaled tooth (just done ~6 months ago) and did a small (but strangely WHITE) build up to make it appear there is a tooth there.

So now instead of Minnie Pearl ( I mean the black out tooth thing, I actually like the hats)... I have a tooth(ish) looking thing in it's place.

Which I do completely prefer to the Hee Haw lookin mouth.

What a painful reminder of how mortal we are and how fleeting youth and beauty can be.

I am not a particularly vain person, rather self-centered at times but not vain per se.
But this is a hard thing to swallow (no, not the tooth, I did not swallow it).
I have commented to my close girlfriends, but it bears restating... My face is thin, not because I am particularly thin, but because I do not have back molars supporting my cheeks.

Losing my teeth affects me so very deeply. I mean, what do you do at my age when you don't have molars anymore and your front teeth are dropping out? Did you know that it can run $3500 - $8000 per tooth for implants (it is on that higher end if you have to have bone grafts) Egads.

So, for now, I am grateful that this tooth does not need to be replaced entirely. (Because no how no way at this point.) And I will wait to have molar implants until later in life.

The question arises: Why are your teeth going bad? We really do not know. The dentist thinks I just have fragile teeth. Meaning that by the time they find a cavity, it is already within and has consumed the interior of my teeth. So instead of a filling, I ended up with root canals early. Then from there, my teeth have been fracturing from the inside out. The last molar I had to have removed fractured under the crown, because the post fractured the tooth and then decayed from the inside out. So sadly, there is not much I can do... I have always drank my milk and brushed and flossed. This lateral incisor fractured inside too, probably just becoming brittle after the root canal earlier this year. SIGH.