The ad-sphere has been cluttered with commercial promising replacing all of one’s
teeth with implants – possibly pulling them all day, coming home with a new
smile. And there are plenty of potential customers in my age group.
“Clear Choice” is perhaps the best known of the operations
that do this.
Today,. I had this done by a private periodontics socialist
and my later mother’s dentist. The price
was probably a bit lower.
I had lost a lot of teeth already, and the uppers were
replaced by a typical removal denture,
anchored by the few good teeth lest. But
the lowers are a total non-removal denture, anchored by five implants. (Actually, that’s how all implant
replacements work.)
One of the interesting aspects was that it was done with
sedation. Valium and Demerol made the
two and half hours to do the lower extractions pass very quickly as a blur.
Things seemed to slow down with the fitting of the dentures – the exact
sculpting, the xrays, and the extra time to test a new process to make a backup
copy of the template impressions right in the office. The whole day kept me the
there ten hours – overtime.

I didn’t know that conscious sedation required ECK
monitoring. So, I “got it”, just like in
a disco: the female attendant pulled up my shirt, without consent, and pasted
on electrodes. Fortunately, there were
some peripheral areas without much hair, and only three electrodes were
required (instead of the usual ten). But
after a backroom break, she had to attach three new ones. Sedation iv was in the elbow, rather than at
the hand or writs, as often in the hospital.
Conscious sedation does require abstaining from food for four hours before
the appointment, and doing without food or drink all day. In that sense, it’s like an all-day
outpatient surgery day.
I suppose we could engage a discussion here why Medicare doesn't cover dental (except for biopsies), and why employer-baaed dental insurance is so weak on "the big stuff".