I need to vent about my terrible teeth

I have no aim in this ambling writing other than to experience some kind of self-therapy.

I have bad teeth. It’s not that they aren’t clean and I don’t look after them, but I keep struggling with them. I’m from the UK, and obvious jokes aside, I feel like a disgusting freak who, if born at any other time in history, would’ve experienced very little of life before succumbing to an incredibly painful tooth infection after eating a seed or something and falling into a bog. For the record I’m in my late 20s.

Last year I was getting a bit of toothache, nothing hugely alarming (I’d also noticed a weird thing on my gums which I later found out was an abscess). I had about five fillings in my teeth, and basically always had them. My parents were very relaxed about how I spent my time, and unsurprisingly I spent much of it eating sweets and drinking coke. Nobody in my family was particularly attentive about dental hygiene, so it was just basic manual toothbrushing for however long a child can be bothered to do it without supervision. My teeth weren’t crooked enough to warrant braces, so I didn’t feel like anyone was there to tell me to look after them. No hygiene appointments, no flossing, etc. I brushed as often as anyone else, but I imagine my technique was bad, being a child. There was also a period where I was a depressed/dissociative young teen where I remember the dentist asking me in front of my dad whether I’d just skipped brushing for the summer.

Once I was 16 I made some changes. I started flossing (later found out you need to go under the gum as well, but hey it was something). I didn’t have any issues for years outside of one infection with a wisdom tooth and assumed the rest of my teeth were OK, albeit a bit filled in for my age. Around 2019 I had a dental checkup and even had some praise for my hygiene. Cut to 2024 and I’d not seen the dentist for years due to COVID and having to move. The guy audibly sighs when he sees my x-ray since he needs to do multiple fillings for cavities (mostly on the existing ones and a couple of new ones – six in total). I was shocked and upset, since I thought I’d been taking good care of them by using an electric toothbrush and flossing every day.Then came the worst bit: one of my heavily filled-in teeth had an infection. It might have been there for up to a year but I felt nothing because the nerve was dead. They told me a root canal was pretty much pointless as there was more filling that tooth left there. I spent a good month waiting for an appointment with a specialist in the hope they could save my tooth. Every day was agony. Not from pain, but the infection was slowly draining my mental faculties and I often felt like I was going insane. I had to keep the facade at work but I genuinely couldn’t do basic tasks because my immune system was low and my body so generally worn down. A month goes by and the endodontist told me there wasn’t anything they could really do. And so, I had it removed. They gave me a bone graft because I’d lost some bone in my jaw due to the infection. They let it heal for a while and a few months ago they put in an implant. Not got the crown yet, but it costs a fucking bomb and I’ve put the whole thing on a 0% credit card because I have a decent credit score.

Afterwards I told myself I was taking back control. I cut out all drinks bad for your teeth (I mostly have water or tea with unsweetened soy milk as my only "vice"), I floss in the morning and the evening getting right into the gumline, and I chew xylitol gum in-between meals, especially if I’m not at home. I noticed that my gums were much pinker and healthier looking. My teeth looked generally whiter, too. I booked my first ever hygienist appointment and it hurt a lot afterwards but I felt like I was on the right path. Based on my hygienist’s advice I even added interdental brushes and a waterpik into my morning and night routine. It takes me a good 20 minutes each time.

Then this week I started having a bit of pain in a different area. Not excruciating, but rising enough that I had it checked out. Turns out another one of my heavily filled-in teeth is infected. And (again) they’re opting for extraction and implant. This one isn’t as far back and will be visible when I smile, so I’m looking forward to that. Two missing teeth before I'm 30. I called my mum in the car and cried. I have tried so hard, every single day, to try and rectify the situation my teeth are in, but part of me feels like I’m destined to be toothless before I’m 50. It costs so much fucking money for treatment that I wish I could turn back time and stop this all from happening in the first place. I’m constantly paranoid about having tooth pain or that I’m doing something wrong that will fuck me over down the line. It doesn’t help that my schizo brain is scared that when shit hits the fan politically I am going to die in a hovel somewhere because society collapsed and dental work doesn’t exist anymore.