March 25, 2011

Juraidah’s makeover

Juraidah before the magic wand did it's stuff

Juraidah works for the Internal Revenue Department. She is a very shy sweet young lady who was conscious of her discoloured tooth and crossbite … that’s when the upper teeth are sort of tilted and growing in behind the lower teeth.

When I first met her she seemed so very reserved! I told her that we could easily correct the discoloured tooth with a crown (she already had completed the root canal treatment) but to really do justice to her, I suggested we do a makeover and correct the crossbite before I did the crown.

I explained to her that the dental technicians are given just models of her teeth to construct the crown, hence they would probably just make a crown based on the models I give them …. they wouldn’t understand that I was going to reposition everything. …. we needed to give them a model of the ‘finished’ makeover to work on!

Stage one: Juraidah's makeover done but with her temporary crown

Juraidah was hesitant … I could see her struggle inside …. you see, she never expected that I could actually create a beautiful smile for her … she had expected only to change the colour of the dead tooth!

After some minutes, she nodded … “OK, let’s do the makeover too!”

“Yay! I promise you won’t be disappointed!”, I said.

I really understand how difficult it is to let someone change your smile … I so appreciate Juraidah’s trust in me.

So last week, we did the initial makeover and prepared the crown models to be sent to the dental technician. I made a temporary crown so Juraidah already looked pretty nice but I told her the best is yet to come …. her actual crown would take a week to be ready.

Meanwhile Juraidah got to get used to her new smile … actually she already looked quite, quite beautiful …. even with a temporary crown!

Yesterday, Juraidah came in for her crown. What a change there was in her! She was smiling wide and looked so much more confident!

That happens so often when we do a makeover …Â it’s like a magic wand sprinkles some fairy dust on them … people come into the clinic too shy to smile or when they do smile, it usually is very self conscious … it’s amazing and so fulfilling to see how people open up, are happier with themselves … the world sort of brightens up somehow! 😉

She sat down and smiled … it made my heart sing!

Placing the permanent crown took less than 15 minutes …. I sat back and passed her the mirror … Juraidah looked into the mirror and broke into an even bigger smile!

“Wow! The colour matches exactly!”, Juraidah said. She loved it!!!

Yes, I explained that the technicians had a week to do the porcelaine work … and there is about 14 different shades that I had to match her tooth colour exactly … and then the technicians also put a glaze on the crown so the finished crown should look so like the other natural teeth, it would be hard to spot which was the crown!