Clearing traffic...

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Went to Mount Sinai today, I'm going to keep this blog brief...I'm kind of tired talking about this.  So, I went to Mount Sinai, was up very early this morning, and I had my Echocardiogram & Pulmonary Perfusion Imaging test done.  After that, I went to Brooklyn Hospital's Dental Clinic, and they were extremely nice there. 

I saw the Oral Surgeon and the General Dentist.  They took Xrays, and what the Oral Surgeon said was that he's looking at 'the big picture' here, meaning that he doesn't want for me to undergo a platelet transfusion, just to have one tooth pulled.  So, it was a good thing that Sam was with me.  The cost of dental implants are very inexpensive there, due to the fact that it's done by residents who need the experience, and my insurance pays for the hospitalization (which would be a must, for the platelet transfusion, I would be in the hospital for a minimum of 2 days), and the only thing that needs to be paid for is the materials, not the labor.  This is what makes dental implants so expensive is the dentists charge a fortune for the labor.  So, the general consensus is that the other teeth that I have under the 7 tooth bridge are not in good shape either.  Also, I was told that I can, and have enough bone, for 2 implants, minimum, on the bottom, to support my full bottom denture.  The implants would work as 'anchors', and instead of having teeth placed on the abutment, it would be snaps, so the denture that I already have can be modified to accomodate the two 'snaps' that would be connected to my jaw, and the denture can snap into my jaw, making a secure fit that will be much more comfortable than it's been now.  I wouldn't need to use polygrip/fixodent or any of that glue stuff. 

Now, as for the top, I would need approx. 4 implants, and they charge $300 per implant, and I would need a sinus lift, as well as bone grafting.  This is a serious procedure, made even more so by my medical condition.  To get everything that I would need done, would probably cost about $3,500, which, thankfully, my boyfriend said he can pay for.  What's more concerning, is my health and if I will be able to get general anesthisia, which I probably will not, due to my PAH, however, I took those 3 tests today that will determine my medical clearance for my Liver transplant.  Based on the first test I took, the stress test, it was very good.  Meaning, that my lungs are compensating for the damage my liver is causing the rest of my body, and that can only be coming from one source: the heart.  So, hopefully, I will get some good news Monday that will let me know that I did very good on these two tests that I took today, and that I don't need additional medication to make the hypertension levels go down.  If that's the case, then I should also be able to get medical clearance not just for the liver transplant, but for the dental implants, as well.

Either way, I'm getting these dental implants, and I'm getting them done at Brooklyn Hospital.  Mount Sinai has a dentist that they 'exclusively' use, and he charges a fortune!  I'm not going to that dentist, and that's the dentist that my Liver doctor is telling me to go to.  What can this dentist do that Brooklyn Hospital can't?  Well, I've found out that they've made a 'protocol' for people who have blood work like me, so it's a little scheme they got going on, a monopoly, so that I feel like they're trying to force me to see their dentist!  What a load of crap! 

So, I will find out Monday how these tests went, and how much my PAH has improved, and on Sept 8th, I'm setting up a plan on getting all of this dental work done.  Till next time...

Damned if I do & damned if I don't...

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Holy crap!  This NEVER ends!!  My bridge was rocking back and forth yesterday, these are my front/side 7 teeth (it's all one piece) and it came out, and my worst fear came true.  One of the five shaved down teeth cracked off with it!  I didn't see it as such a big deal at the time, because I'm just thinking, the dentist will pull what little root of tooth is left, and will cut off the last 2 teeth of my 7 tooth bridge and make it into a 5 tooth bridge.  WRONG!!!

Maybe I shouldn't have been honest, but, I feel that with this stuff, honesty is the best policy.  So I went to a local dentist, who was very nice, and I told him that I have such serious health issues (which I was planning on holding back, because I just want the damned tooth out!), and, as expected, he asked for medical clearance to pull the root of the tooth.  I thought I was going to get it, it's just a root of a tooth, no big deal, after all, I've had 19 teeth pulled already, so I know what was coming,  plus, the tooth has(had) a root canal on it, so I don't feel a thing on it, I feel like if I took a pair of plyers, I could pull it out myself!  Well, my Transplant Dr. did sign the paper for clearance, and, sadly, he also faxed over my most recent blood work.  The dentist called once he received the fax, and could have knocked me over with a feather.

He said, with my platelet count being non-existent, along with my White Blood Cells, that there is NO WAY that he would be able to do the extraction.  He explained that I would bleed to death, the bleeding wouldn't stop, since a low platelet count means that I can't coagulate, and a non-existent WBC count means that I can't heal.  So, he gave me the number of the hospital, Brooklyn Hospital, and told me what was going to have to happen.  I would need to see the oral surgeon there, I would need a freakin blood transfusion to pump up the platelet count, then he will extract the lil stub of tooth!  Seems like an awfully lot of crap to go through just to get rid of a tiny root in my mouth!  This disturbs me a great deal.  I've never had a blood transfusion before, and I don't know if I want one.  I know blood gets screened more properly than it did in the past, but I just don't want to have to take those unneccesary risk.  All of that just to pull one lil tooth?!

I'm very depressed from all of this, my bridge is being supported by fixodent as of right now, and I can pull it down at any time.  I can't possibly walk around like this for a month, maybe more!  Who knows how long it will take to pump up my platelet count?!  Then, I'll have to have a damned emergency standby team there?  I feel like I'm losing it!  My dentist, and I can't blame him, cause he seems like a very nice man, and I wouldn't mind seeing him again, especially because he told me a few interesting things today about dental implants, and the bone grafting, and told me that if I get it done at this hospital, where I'm going to tomorrow, all I pay for is the materials for the dental implants, and with the implants, abutment and crown, it will be $900 per tooth.  That's a great price, compared to the $15,000 that other dentists charge, considering if I (and I do) wish to keep what little teeth I have left in my mouth, it would be about $3500, which my boyfriend told me that he can pay for (thank god for that!), and to get the process started, it would be about $1,200 to start the whole process to get the 4 implants that I will need.  However, I will not have any teeth in my head during this time.  My self-esteem has taken enough detramental blows, I just don't thing that I can walk around with no teeth in my head!  Even though I know that I will get a more 'permanent' solution to all these problems, but, even more crutial, is that if I need a damned blood transfusion for a simple extraction, when will I get clearance to do all of this other stuff?!  I don't see it happening anytime soon, so I just need to get this tooth extracted, and the dentist can then shave off the last 2 teeth, make my 7 tooth bridge into a 5 tooth bridge.  My upper partial-denture can be modified to add those 2 teeth, and that my insurance will cover all of it.

This is just another reminder of how damned sick I am, and how badly I want my health to be better again.  Such simple stuff that I take it for granted, that I think a lot of people take for granted, which is their health!  I always had the naive, childish attitude that I was young and nothing bad can happen to me.  I was never more wrong in my entire life. 

So, this root must get extracted, because if it doesn't, then it will get infected, and all hell will then break lose!  Damned if I do, and damned if I don't!  Till next time...

Adding to the top of the mountain...

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You know the little yodeling man in 'The Price Is Right"? I feel like that little man going up and up until no end...well, if you know the game, the man eventually will fall from his 'high mountain' and just disappear. Well, I'm not disappearing!

A new, and at the same time, old problem has arisen in my life.  For those who know me personally, then they know the story about my teeth.  For those who don't know me or don't know the story, here it is:

When I was 19 year's old, I went to a dentist. This was a long time coming...at this point in my life, I was not doing anything good! I was on a very long drug binge, and my teeth just started to literally crack in half.  I feared going to the dentist, as may people do, and neglected the 'oral hygiene' that is so vital to everyone, especially someone that was my age!  So, reluctantly, due to pain in my teeth that the substances I was abusing would no longer cover, I went to the dentist.  I left there in tears.

When I saw this 'dentist' (and I refer to him as such, for reasons that will soon become clear), he determined that I needed 19 of my teeth pulled! Now, I knew that my teeth were bad...but I didn't know they were that bad! So, without any knowledge of what a 'bridge, dental implants or even the word extraction' was, I let him begin this process of pulling out the 19 out of about 30 teeth that I was born with.  He pulled 5 teeth that day, and I went to (at the time 'boyfriend', presently my ex-husband) Steve's job, which was only a few blocks away and told him what the dentist said, my gums in stitches, my face in tears.  The 'plan' that my dentist told me was to have all these 19 'bad' teeth pulled and get partial dentures. I thought it would be great, that I would no longer have to worry about pain in my mouth & I would have teeth again.  I couldn't have been more wrong.


So, time passed, as I continued to see this dentist, he eventually pulled all of the 19 teeth, and I healed and got the partial dentures.  They felt like having, well, a foreign object in my mouth.  That's exactly what partial dentures are!  They're painful, I couldn't even imagine ever eating with those 'torture devices' in my mouth, not to mention the spitting while talking, and all of this other gross stuff.  So, learning the hard way, I stood with the partial dentures for a while, until I spoke to someone and they told me what a bridge was.  That they could make one piece of false teeth that were permanent, or semi-permanent, anchored by my real teeth underneath, and that the teeth underneath didn't need to be in 'excellent' condition, and I should talk to my dentist about it.  So I did.  I asked him what exactly a 'bridge' was and he explained it all to me and then mentioned "you never said that you wanted to do a bridge", and that's because he never told me what a bridge was!! How was I, a young, naive, 19 year old, supposed to know what a 'bridge' is? So, he now said to me "Your insurance will not pay for this, and it will cost $500 a tooth". I agreed to this, and got my first bridge done on some of the last remaining teeth I had left in my head.  I then needed to get a new partial denture to accommodate this new bridge, and I loved it! It was the closest thing that I had to having my own teeth again! I then got pregnant, had my son, and had bigger things to worry about than my teeth.  So they had to take a 'backseat' for that time being. And they did.


About five years passed, I went to a local dentist who was very nice and had a completely different attitude from my old dentist.  This dentist stressed how important it was to keep my own teeth, and wondered...'Why, at such an early age, did this dentist deem it necessary to pull 19 of my teeth?'  He wanted to see the original X-rays from before I had all of these teeth pulled.  I went back to my old dentist and he refused to give me the X-rays unless I paid him $50.  I did.  And when I took the X-rays to my new dentist...I left there in tears, once again.  He told me that out of the 19 teeth that I had pulled, he saw only 6 that were 'beyond the point of fixing'.  Meaning, that I had 13 teeth unnecessarily pulled!  That's called 'medical malpractice' and this 'dentist' could have had his medical license taken away from him.  I went to a lawyer, armed with the X-rays and letter from my new dentist, and the lawyer said that I absolutely had a case.  However, the statute of limitations had ran out from the first three years after he had pulled my teeth.  So, legally, there was nothing that I could do, even though what this 'dentist' did was criminal, and I could (and should) have gotten all the money necessary to get dental implants and, at the very least, try to correct this horrible wrong that he did so long ago.  But, that option had long expired; I found out about this too late.  I was now stuck with the burden of caring for what little (I believe, at this point, it was 7) teeth that I had left in my head, and had to accept the fact that I would never be the same again...that the bone where missing teeth were had atrophied, and would continue to do so, and the only option to get teeth that would not come out and feel comfortable in my head were dental implants.  Now, anyone who knows about dental implants, knows that this is no small procedure.  And at my age, or even the age that I was (which was about 24), I would need bone grafting and a sinus lift to 'rebuild' the bone that had deteriorated in my mouth and jaw in order to sustain the impact of the drilling and the screws that go into the jawbone, to rebuild the bone that had healed over all the missing 'pockets' where my teeth used to be.  And, better yet, ALL of this work is considered to be 'cosmetic' and my insurance would not pay a cent for it! Even at my age, and especially due to the fact that I already had so many missing teeth, the only option my insurance provided was to get full dentures...it does not matter how young I am, or that I would be stuck wearing dentures for the rest of my life! 


So, that brings us to the now.  And the 'now' is this...I have 2 bridges in my mouth.  One of them, is a 3 tooth bridge, which is pretty much one piece, but three separate crowns all with little 'stubs' of teeth underneath all three of them.  The second bridge, is more important.  It has four little 'stubs' of teeth underneath it that is anchoring the seven tooth bridge (meaning, one tooth is there, one is not, one is there, one is not, one is there....etc. but it must end with one tooth there, to end the 'anchoring' and secure the bridge).  So these four 'stubs' underneath this seven tooth bridge, I cannot see, nor can an X-ray see the state of these 'stub teeth' cause the bridge is made of metal w/porcelain.  Well, two days ago, this 'bridge' came out (it isn't the first time, when it would come out, I would just glue it back in) but I noticed when it came out, that the condition of the 'stub' teeth that anchor this bridge were in horrible shape.  One of them, in particular, which is in the back and is the last tooth that anchors the bridge, was wiggling back & forth and I felt a dull pain (which I shouldn't since those four 'stub' teeth all have root canals done on them) so, I went to a dentist, and the only option I have to save the ten front teeth that I have, would be to have the four 'stub' teeth underneath pulled, get a sinus lift, bone grafting, and dental implants put in lieu of the 'stub' teeth.  This is a very serious procedure.  It's excruciatingly painful, and super expensive.  It would cost roughly $15,000.  And, as of right now, that's only half the battle.  I would need medical clearance for a procedure like this to be done.  I'm almost certain that I wouldn't get it.  As of right now, my most recent blood work shows that my White Blood Cell count is 1.9 which is dangerously low. A normal count should be in the reference range from 4.5 to 11.0.  Also, my platelets are very low, as well.  They are 47, and the normal reference range is 150 to 450.  This is very bad to have, since not only is my blood like water, and I bleed like a stuffed pig, even from the slightest pick of a scab, due to the low platelet count, but I can't fight off infection & heal properly because of the dangerously low White Blood Cell count.  These are the issues I am now facing.


Just when I thought that my brain could possibly not absorb any more BS, this problem raises it's ugly head at the most awful moment! So what I am going to be forced to do, is 'wear this bridge till the wheels fall off', meaning I will keep it in until this tooth falls out on it's own...and when that does happen, since it is the last tooth in the back anchoring this seven tooth bridge, I will have to have the bridge altered to a five tooth bridge, and keep that in, for the time being.  This would be only a very temporary solution to a greater problem.  I've seen the teeth underneath the bridge and it ain't pretty! However, they are not rocking back & forth, so I will not let them get pulled until they, too, eventually fall out.  My biggest concern is, will I get this transplant before my 'stub' teeth fall out?  Will I be able to get medical clearance for this procedure, and even if I was to get medical clearance for this prior to my transplant, will it heal properly?  Is this even an option to just 'come up' with the $15,000 this will cost? I know, of all people and my experiences, how shady dentists can be.  This dentist that I saw yesterday said, and I quote "It would be nice to get medical clearance for this, but we can do this in a hospital with a medical team on standby".  WTF?!? It would 'be nice' to get medical clearance?  Meaning, he'll just take the $15,000 if I don't have medical clearance, and I may die from blood loss, or it may get infected and my body won't be able to heal it?  This is a 'one shot' deal.  They only go in once, they are not going to 'open up my jaw' if it gets infected to fix it, this will all cost more money if that has to happen, which the odds of it happening in my case, I would think, are pretty damned high.  


So, I'm pretty much at a loss on what to do about this.  First off, I am pleading to anyone reading this who thinks that they can help, financially, towards fixing the teeth I have left, or if they know of a dentist who would be willing to help me at a more reasonable cost.  Now, I would need a sinus lift, bone grafting, dental implants with the abutments, and, finally, a new 7 tooth bridge once (and only if it's possible to raise my WBC count and if my Dr. says I have a reasonable chance of doing this successfully) everything has healed.  If anyone reading this thinks that they know of a better solution for this problem, or is a dentist who wishes to see me in the NYC tri-state area (or if you are in another state, I would be willing to fly there and see another dentist if they are willing to give me a very reasonable price, but remember, that it must be worth my time to fly there, spend money on a flight & hotel and all of that). Please contact me if you think that you can help, or if you know of anyone who can help...I really hate to do this, but I think as of right now, I'm going through more than enough issues, medically, emotionally and every and any other way possible, and I need the help.  Thanks for reading...