Question:
A family member of mine needs to get braces at some point. Since it is so hard to describe, he was willing to let me take some pictures in order to try to get some advice before picking a dentist.
When he was about 5-7 years or so of age, approximately, he somehow fell and hit his mouth on the floor. His top front set of teeth went over his bottom lip and basically bit a hole in the skin about half of an inch below his bottom lip. Having been raised in an extremely poor family with a single parent, the money was never available for him to go to a dentist and get it fixed early on in life. Instead, he grew up in school being made fun of for the ‘gap’ in his teeth. He’s just miserable and 26 years old. A lot of his effort went to helping his family first, so he has really neglected himself. Apparently the fall and trauma seems to have caused his teeth to grow in very much incorrectly on the front; top and bottom, and possibly even affecting the back. It looks like some of the very back widsom teeth grew in crooked.
He also has one tooth in the very back bottom left (I think these are called molars or something?) that has a large cavity. The tooth is basically ‘hollow’ and black with the cavity. Likely not possible to save it. There seems to be a (not yet formed well) cavity directly in front of that tooth, as well. That one…a dentist should be able to just drill it out and fill it since it’s not bad.
Pictures are here:
http://img292.imageshack.us/img292/1969/miniimg0153ek6.jpg (note: that top tooth that looks like it has puffy white stuff around it…that’s not apparently any type of infection or anything. Gross as it may be…apparently that’s something left over from food.)
http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/6586/miniimg0168hu0.jpg (The small front bottom teeth directly in the middle have a type of tan/brownish color towards the roots. Is this normal for those particular teeth?) Also, the white ‘spot’ in the back is not a disease, cancer or whatever – he says he has dealt with canker sores on and off from his early youth and they sometimes get back on the back part of the throat and such).
http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/4033/miniimg0156kn9.jpg
Obviously, perhaps a cleaning and those cavities would most likely be the first things a dentist might want to do.
But what would his options for braces be? Would he be able to get the invisalign things, or would that not work for the condition of his teeth and the multiple ‘gaps’ to the point where not many of them line up in the front? It looks like his teeth on the bottom go further out than the teeth on the top do, which also seems to make the ‘gap’ in the middle look larger (underbite?)
Oh yeah, he speaks with a ‘lisp’ due to the air that blows through the gap in his teeth…particularly the two top front teeth. It makes it hard for him to speak. He says that some of the teeth halfway back are sort of inwards and may not be giving his tongue enough room to move and rest properly between the teeth, which makes it hard for others to understand him (in addition to his very southern accent, which makes it miserable for him to work in customer service – his current job field).
Ahead of time, before any answers are posted to this question…be advised that I will report every nonserious answer, ever “insult” answer, and every answer that does the “that’s too long, do you expect me to read that?” thing. Thanks.
