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Think about your teeth. You
open your mouth and before uttering a word, people know all they need to know
about you. If your teeth are chipped, discolored or misaligned, then the sexiest
Armani suit won’t compensate.
The damage is done. Your suit
says, “Takes care of himself on the surface.” Your teeth say, “Lives in a wet
Maytag box under a bridge.”
Think about the money you spend
on your hair. Your glasses. Perhaps getting a nose job. It’s not a matter of
vanity. Everyone wants to look their best, but moving North-to-South, people
tend to start with their hair and stop at their noses.
They don’t think about their
teeth. I didn’t. I had a nasty chip in a front tooth. Until Dr. Shari
Morningstar told me it could be fixed, I’d learned
to smile in a sort or sneer, using my upper lip to mask the damage.
Origin of the accident
 I was playing bicycle tag on a hot summer
day in Detroit. I was 12 years old and gaining on Tommy, who was flashing along
only a house or so ahead of me. We were both riding 10-speeds with ape-hanger
handlebars.
Tommy shot up a driveway onto
the sidewalk carefully aiming for the green, soft part of the garden hose a
neighbor had pulled across the sidewalk to water the lawn on the boulevard.
Before, I was
careful with my smile--
even on my wedding day!
I was concentrating on Tommy,
not the hose, and hit the brass coupling that
was holding two pieces of the hose together.
I went over the handlebars. The
next thing I remember is a doctor in Sinai
Hospital’s emergency room saying I was fortunate. No concussion, no breaks. Just
bruises, a couple remarkably deep scratches and a severely chipped front tooth.
Lots of sympathy from my sixth-grade
girlfriend, Patti.
That was 34 years ago. Back
then my dentist, Dr. Mark Lawnsberry, didn’t know what to do. He filed down the
jagged edge as best he could. Dr. Lawnsberry’s concern was keeping the tooth.
Too much fiddling and Dr. Lawnsberry said he was afraid he’d expose the nerve,
and then it would have to come out.
The Starbucks encounter
My wife, Suzanne, and I met Dr. Shari Morningstar and Dr. Steve Gustafson at
the Starbucks in downtown Royal Oak. Shari and Steve, a husband-and-wife team,
own a dental practice on 11 Mile in Royal Oak.
While we were talking, Shari
asked me if I’d ever considered having my front tooth fixed. I said I didn’t
know it could be fixed – in 34 years, no dentist had even mentioned the
possibility of repair. She assured me that Steve could make it look like I’d
never gone over the handlebars.
It took me a few months to warm
up to the idea. Now, I wish I’d done it the following day.
The process
End to end, the
whole thing took about two weeks. The only discomfort came from my own anxiety,
which proved entirely unnecessary. Other than a little
pressure that came with a
shot to
numb the area, it didn’t
hurt, period. I’d tell you if it did.
The first thing Dr. Gustafson
and his assistant, Sharon, did was spend a lot of time assessing the situation.
They wanted a plan. Given the damage to the
front tooth and the uneven nature of
 the
teeth immediately surrounding it, they decided to, in roofing terms, do a
tear-down.
Six teeth, including the
chipped one, were going to be fixed, from canine to canine. Each tooth would be
individually prepped to eventually accept an individual porcelain veneer that
fits better than a glove.
Before
 Dr.
Gustafson first took an impression and had his lab build a before-and-after,
three-dimensional model. If you’re not sure you want to do this, just wait until
you see the “after” model of what your teeth could look like.
Then work started. It was
divided into two sessions.
After
Dr. Gustafson and Sharon numbed
the area and filed down each tooth. They work carefully and in tandem – no
wasted motion.
When my teeth were prepped,
Sharon made me what is called a “temporary.” Besides needles, this was another
part of my anxiety. I had a major meeting coming up in two days, replete with
visions of doing my talk in front of 30 people – with teeth that looked like the
big wax buck teeth and red lips parents used to hand out on Halloween.
The temporary was nothing of
the kind. Unlike the permanent teeth I would get, the temporary is one, solid
piece. Dr. Gustafson and Sharon worked on it a little and when I left, you
probably wouldn’t have known it was a temporary fitting unless I’d told you.
Before I left, we did a color
match. This is one place where science takes a backseat to art.
Sharon and Dr. Gustafson must
have spent half an hour holding up samples to match my teeth in color and tone.
(It’s worthwhile to note that Dr. Gustafson suggested I bleach my teeth before
this process. I’d started smoking when I was 12, and even though I stopped 4
years ago, my teeth were still a sexy, inviting murky yellowish-gray.)
Phase Two
Two weeks and one broken temporary later (don’t chew on anything with a
temporary), I was back in the chair. The temporary came off, Sharon and Dr.
Gustafson cleaned up the teeth, and then one by one, they cemented the veneers
to each tooth.
This is when science is given
the weekend off and art takes over. I could probably stick a veneer over one of
your teeth. No big thing.
But I can’t shape it. I can’t
fit is so that it feels just like your own tooth. And I can’t make it appear to
be a natural fit among the other teeth.
Dr. Gustafson can. It must not
be too unlike sculpting. When he finally held up a mirror, I was stunned.
For 34 years, I’d walked around
looking like I got out of a bar fight the previous evening. And now, it was not
only fixed, but better than before.
My front six teeth are level.
The color matches perfectly. People I run into have, almost to the individual,
noticed something different about me, but because these teeth are such a natural
fit, they can’t put their finger on it.
The real test, though, was when
my mom came to dinner.
This is a woman who went to
work so I could have braces. She didn’t know what my wide smile was for, but
then she noticed the chip she’d grown so accustomed to was gone, like it had
never happened.
She gave me a big smile back
and said, “It’s about time.” That made it all worthwhile.
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