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Dan's Story
My name is Dan and i would like to share with you an occurence in my life. I'm a 41 year old father of three lovely kids.
I have a bilateral cleft/lip and my partial that was made for me 20 years ago needed to be scrapped. I went back to the institution for an evaluation. After the evaluation they asked me if I would like to get rid of my partial and opt for dental implants.
This would involve yet another bone graft. Did you ever get the feeling that they are going to operate again??????????? Well anyway, in a last ditch effort to feel a wine or beer on my palate or the feel of what food is like on my palate, i agreed to another bone graft to reinforce the upcoming dental implants. as you know it was a painful ordeal for us adults, it didn't hurt so bad as a kid.
The bone graft failed miserably!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And ripped out what bone had been put there some 23 years ago. i went from an asymptomatic tiny opening in my palate to a gaping hole probably as big as the day I was born. Sounds depressing eh???? Well it was.
After three years of not being able to breath out of one side of my nose and countless quarts of afrin type products to help me, I decided to go back and see what they could do for me.
The answer came in the form of a soft tissue closure, it worked well, only one or two times after screaming at a soccer game did i detect any opening in my palate.
From age 18-37 I lived as many of us do, with all of the psycological scars and esteem problems, but i managed not to let it bother me. I am me. Hopefully you are you as well. But now later in life i find myself being very careful about things coming to close to my face so it doesn't ruin my tissue closure. so if anyone out there is considering surgery later in life, think long and hard about it. They didn't even tell me any odds on the bone graft failure. I trusted them implicitly as I had for my whole life. But now the road seems to be coming to an end.. I should have a new partial soon and hopefully i'll get back to where I was at many years ago.............. Ttrust no one!!!!!!!