Tale of the Teef

I finally received my night guard in the mail yesterday. This is the gizmo that is supposed to keep me from grinding my teeth into oblivion at night. Remember how I wrote about having to do my own molds of my teeth? Well, I had to redo them. Apparently I didn’t press my teeth far enough into the putty to get a full impression the first time. They actually only sent me the bottom one on the redo even though they said I messed up both of them. This made sense though because they only make a guard for one side of your mouth and I asked for one on the bottom since my teeth are in worse shape down there.

So I redid the mold and sent it off a couple of weeks ago. I was getting a little antsy about when I would receive the guard. I wore it last night for the first time and it’s way better than the store-bought one. It’s pretty much non-intrusive and you don’t really notice wearing it. The store-bought one didn’t hurt my jaw as much as it did the last time I wore it for any length of time (I think because the first time I was clenching it like someone was digging a bullet out of my leg), but it did cause me problems in opening my jaw all the way like if I wanted to take a really big bite of food. I’m looking forward to that little issue going away. So was it worth it to order this thing over the internet instead of at the dentist? Despite the fact that it took about a month and a half to get it, I would say yes. The whole shebang cost me $226 (including $13 postage for the redo), which sounds like a lot but the dentist would have charged $600! Plus, I get to keep the cast of my teeth so I can order another one when this one wears out eventually.

New, space-age, comfortable mouth guard on left. Old, neolithic, uncomfortable big honkin' MFer mouth guard on right.

Isn't this cool? This is the cast of my lower teeth!



I was hoping to get a top and bottom cast so I could move them and pretend that the teeth were talking to me, but they only sent me the bottom cast.