How one UK woman Angie Barlow managed to salvage her dental problems after resorting to disastrous home remedy.
Angie Barlow, a 48 year old Altrincham, Cheshire, UK mother, as a result of her fear and terror of going to the dentist has had 90% of her upper jaw bone eroded after using superglue to stick her falling teeth back in.
The fall out as a result of the woman performing dental surgery on herself over the course of ten years would lead to Angie having to go through most of her life savings to undo the damage she had done to herself and installing false teeth.
Told the woman via the mirror who in the end had to have most of her teeth removed and re inserted with titanium pins into her skull:
‘I’ve always been scared of the dentist because my mum died at 34 from throat cancer.
‘She had a tooth out, and that’s how they found she had cancer.
Constructive dental surgery
‘That fear has always been in the back of my mind… you just get your mind set and you just think, you don’t go. You don’t make that phone call.’
Dentists think Angie a professional dog walker may have caused damage to her teeth given her years of constant smoking.
Told Dr Serpil Djemal, consultant and clinical lead at Kings College Hospital: ‘It’s probably one of the worst cases that I’ve seen and certainly one, one of the worse cases of desperation, to superglue a tooth back in the mouth.’
Speaking before an operation to correct the damage Angie said: ‘When the tooth comes out, I just put a little bit of glue and try and hold it in place to keep it…so I don’t have a gap in my teeth.
‘I used glue on the top of the tooth, and then I put it back in place until the glue is set.’
She said she became reclusive because of her embarrassment and said: ‘I just feel so self-conscious that I don’t do, you know I don’t go anywhere really.
The price of self denial
‘Even going in the shop, I feel embarrassed, they’d be like, nudge, nudge, look at her, you know.
‘Even in front of my son I’m embarrassed to like sit and have a conversation with him.
‘So I’ll just turn my head away while I talk to him. Half the time I talk with my hand over my mouth.
“I know I shouldn’t really because it draws the eye even more.’
Constructive dental surgery has since seen 11 of Angie’s top teeth extracted and 6 titanium screws inserted into Angie’s jaw with 12 new teeth permanently attached.
Told the woman after the ordeal: ‘Wonderful isn’t it, I feel amazing, and there’s no hands over my mouth or embarrassment, and, the difference people have said in me, noticed in me, my friends, things like that, they’re just like, oh my God, you’re more outgoing.’
Treatment for this type of surgery costs between £6,000 ($9100 USD) and £16,000 ($24 000 USD) and takes three to four hours.
What do you think? Shouldn’t you too finally be picking up that phone and making the dreaded phone call to the dentist?
I could have gone the rest of my life without ever seeing that picture.
So glue was not the answer for once.