By Alexander Germanis
Life is complicated enough. Between work, maintaining a home, dealing with car problems, paying bills, and dealing with your loved ones, ensuring that your personal health is being properly taken care of sometimes slips between the cracks.
Taking care of one’s pearly whites can be just one more task on a long list of daily irritants. After all, how many people can honestly answer “yes” to their dentist when asked if they brush after every meal and floss every day?
For those with high-maintenance teeth or dental appliances, that daily irritant is doubled or even tripled. Bridges, in particular, are one of those things that can complicate regular dental maintenance.
Marie, a patient of Emil Verban, Jr., DDS, knows all too well how much more complicated life can be with artificial fixes such as bridges. That was precisely why she jumped at Dr. Verban’s recommendation that she switch to dental implants. “When we talked about the implants,” Marie says, “he explained why he thought it was good idea. In other words, I didn’t walk in and say, ‘Okay, stick them in.’ He explained everything.”
“The implants have been quite an improvement,” Marie adds. “They hold tighter and they don’t limit me to eating anything. Not that there wasn’t anything I had not been eating before that I can’t eat now — it was just nice that there wasn’t any food getting into my bridges anymore. That made it so much better.”
Cleaning is often made easier with dental implants because floss is not used in quite the same way as with regular teeth. Rather than flossing between each individual tooth, with implants, floss is used to clean under the new, artificial teeth — between the bottom of the teeth and the gum line. This is because each implant anchor in the jawbone actually holds a pair of connected teeth, with no gap between those teeth.
Besides the ease of maintenance, adjusting to the implants posed zero problems for Marie. “[After the implants were placed,] Dr. Verban gave me pain pills,” she recalls. “I never even had to use them.”
While a pain-free transition is not a guarantee, there have been very few cases of reported discomfort, and in those particular instances, the discomfort is short lived. It is important to remember, for those who do experience any difficulty in the transition, there will always be a team providing support.
“If you do have a problem,” Marie says, “Dr. Verban is more than willing to listen to what you have to say. He’s a very good, kind, and compassionate dentist. I’ve been very pleased and I should say I am very pleased with not just the doctor, but his staff as well. They are so good and have been so kind. I’ve had no problem getting adjusted to everything as it was explained to me. So, I wasn’t going in there blind and not knowing what was going on or what was happening.”
As with any medical issues, pain, discomfort, and adapting are not the only worries. There is always a concern with the cost. Although insurance plans differ, in Marie’s case in particular, her insurance did not cover the cost of the implants. “I had to pay out of pocket,” she admits. “But,” she points out, “I had to look at it like, what is better for me?”
Payment plans are also available for dental implants, meaning neither the act of getting the implants nor the act of paying for them need be unpleasant, particularly if implants are thought of as an investment in one’s own health. As patients like Marie will heartily attest, “It will be worth the output.”
If you missed the previous articles on the dental implant procedure, you may read them online at HealthyCellsBN.com or contact Cheryl Eash at 309-664-2524.
For more information, you may contact Emil Verban, Jr., DDS at 309-662-8448 or visit mcleancountydental.com. McLean County Dental is located at 2103 E. Washington Street in Bloomington. Dr. Verban provides his patients both general dentistry expertise and the ability to provide specialized services such as cosmetic procedures and dental implants.