Toothy tale: a 55-year history.

Drinking my breakfast. Yesterday I spent four hours in oral surgery at Boston University's Goldman School of Dental Medicine, having three titanium implants screwed into my skull (for teeth 8, 9, & 10). (Carnation Instant Breakfast is now called "Carnation Breakfast Essentials.") New front teeth are still several months away, but the worst part is over.   

I decided to go the implant route when my 8-year-old bridge broke out last year. The implants will be worth the investment, since my wife and I plan to see our 70th wedding anniversary, which will be in 2043, at age 100 for me (but far less for her, of course). 

My front tooth problems began when my hockey stick fell into my front spokes on the way to play hockey in a Wilmette, Illinois, park in the early winter of 1956. I hit the curbstone at 13th and Ashland, next to Ann Rheinstrom's back yard. The root canals done then in my two front teeth kept them in my head for some 47 years. Finally, one tooth broke on a lollipop given me by a bank, and I had to have a bridge made.  That was in 2002. I never got used to the bridge, which never felt like my real teeth.

I am told that implants are as close to one's natural teeth as one can get, and that most who have them love them.  I hope that proves true in my case.

Small world department

The Goldman School at BU is a multicultural place.  My implants were installed by my periodontist Dr. Konstantina (Tina) Thomadaki from Greece, where I taught in 2001, and my prosthetic teeth are to be made and installed by Dr. Alex Vojdanoski from F.Y.R.O.M. (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), which Shirl and I visited in 2010.  My overseeing faculty doctors are Dr. Morin from Puerto Rico, where my older brother has lived for 40 years, and Dr. Price, an American whose son has recently invested in a home in Panama, from which I returned four days before the surgery.