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I don’t understand exactly why my teeth…my upper teeth and my lower teeth wore so quickly. But they were wearing down. They were probably a third of the size…a third less of the size they were originally. And my father had the same problem. He was getting older, and he reached a point in his 70s where they were pretty bad, but his health didn’t allow him to have the procedure done. So I thought I didn’t want that to happen to me. And I thought the sooner I have it done, the sooner I have better teeth and a better smile.

He presented me with some options. And I ended up capping them all because it’s just…I guess they match each other better when they’re all done at one time. And then he went through the different shades of white that you can get. I kind of took the middle of the road, so I didn’t have a blinding smile. They take a mold, and then they have a temporary caps come out, and they put those on while permanent caps are being made. And so, I guess, all in all, it took maybe three weeks to get done. But I was never without…I was never uncomfortable or never without some sort of way to eat.

At first, I thought, wow, these are really big teeth I have now because they were so worn down before, but they look great. And I was really happy with it. I’m smiling more. I like to smile more, and people smile back. And it’s a good feeling. Yeah.

I remember that I had a tooth that went bad, and I remember I had a…you know, going through the different options of root canal and shave it down. And then, at a certain point, it’s like we have to take a different action here.

The process was more comprehensive, right? And so we ended up having this experience of going through something I haven’t been through before. But I think it’s interesting that I don’t remember it. I think that says a lot about this office in the way they approached it. It felt… When I think back about my time coming to the office here, I think about the service that I’ve received. I think about the competence of the people that I have interacted with. I think about how slick it is to be sitting in that chair with the technology that they use so effortlessly and these things that are happening in my mouth.

If there was more trauma involved, I think I would remember them better. It kind of feels like… It’s just what they do. Right, it feels so normal. Right, so it’s a bummer. Oh, man, I lost my real tooth. But the implant goes in, and it’s a little bit more involved. There’s two reasons for not remembering it, right? It was such a horrible experience that I blocked it out, or it was such a normalized experience that I can’t remember the details of it. I think it’s the latter.

I remember, as a kid, having orthodontia, having braces, right? And when I went through that experience, all of a sudden, I became way more aware of the way…of people’s smiles, of teeth. And I was… I just remember it, even as a kid starting to pay attention, like wow, that’s a beautiful smile, that’s a beautiful smile, that’s a beautiful smile. That has been something that has been…that I’ve become aware of. I think that I’ve been so appreciative of being able to look at my own smile and to feel good about what I see.

And so when you ask the question, I’m like, how do I feel about my own smile? I’m like, well, that is… I think I would be sensitive if what I saw I didn’t like. And I don’t, right? I feel good about smiling. I feel good about… I feel confident about putting on a big old smile and letting the world see it. And I think that this office has a lot to do with that.

I think the quality of care here is top-notch. I’m thinking about friends that I have that are also people that I’ve referred here and people who…the person who referred me here. We occasionally… In fact, it just happened with the person that I had referred here. She needed to come to the dentist, and we had a little exchange about Marnie, in this case, and the exchange they had. And it was just like, I just love her.

I think when I have somebody in my life that comes here and totally separate from this office, comes back and comments about how happy they are. And it’s very removed, right, from me. I have nothing to do with how this office operates. But I made that referral now, years ago, and still, it’s a part of our exchange outside of this office that we both have this thing in common. And it’s because the care here, the quality, is so high, and then the care that goes along with that quality is so high. It’s why I keep coming back.

When I decided to get a dental implant, it was really based on an incident that happened, oh, 50 years ago. And that was because, when I was a young girl, I had my two front teeth knocked out. And the dentist at the time was able to put them back in, and I had a splint for the entire time I went to high school. And then, when I went to college, he removed the splint, and I always had some discoloration on my teeth. And then later on, when I was in graduate school, one of the teeth became infected. And so that had to come out, and I had a bridge. So I’ve had a bridge the majority of my life, and I’ve had dental problems the majority of my life.

And Dr. Hansen talked with me about possibilities. When it acted up again, and I was going to have to have the other tooth taken out, then that would have been a larger bridge, or I could have had implants. And so we talked about the pros and cons of each, and I just decided I wanted to do something permanent that I didn’t have to deal with ever again. And then the day that I got them, it was amazing because all of a sudden, I have these beautiful teeth, and I’m not going to have to worry about them.

After that accident, I’ve always been conscious of my teeth…my front teeth. And people have commented on them at different places. Like, if you’re in a restaurant that has different kind of lighting, they would kind of fluoresce, you know? And so when we decided to do the implants and when we decided to do the veneers, I really wanted something that looked natural, and that for my job, I have to spend time out in eating situations with people. I have to go with donors and stakeholders, and we have to have dinner and we have to have lunch, and we have to go out in the evenings. It’s so important that they look natural wherever I’m at, whatever kind of lighting. And that’s what I feel this does.

And we specifically looked at colors and how to match the color of my existing teeth because I didn’t want all of the work done on my bottom teeth. And so, because of that, it feels very natural. I think that they look appropriate, and I think people notice my smile. They don’t notice my teeth.

When I decided to have cosmetic dentistry or work done, I did it because I wanted to feel more confident and I wanted people to notice my smile and not be zeroing in on my teeth because I did have discoloration and I had different caps or crowns that had been put on by different dentists over the years. And so nothing was ever really had a continuity of color, and I really wanted that. I felt that that was important, but I didn’t want to have cosmetic dentistry that screamed white. I didn’t want them to be like Hollywood white. I wanted them to be natural color that went with my existing teeth and then get rid of all the variations of color on my teeth. And so that’s why I decided to do the veneers.

And we did, I think, redo one cap or one crown to match. And so it just really created a seamless look, and that’s what I was going for. I chose veneers because they keep your original tooth intact, and then they just cover up the discoloration and they create a clean service for you to actually brush and floss. And so I felt it was a look that I wanted, and I felt that the ease of maintenance was important.

When I’m out, I actually have a lot of pictures taken of me because of my job, and so we had a homecoming last weekend. So just walking up and down the parade route, I ran into alumni, I ran into advisory board members, and everybody wants a picture with them, right? And I want a picture with them. And so now that I have this dental work done and I don’t worry about my teeth and I don’t worry about my smile, I just give great big smiles all the time.

And when I look at the pictures that get on social media because it goes on Instagram, they go on LinkedIn, and they go on Facebook, my smile looks good, and I look good. And it’s not that you necessarily go, oh, that’s a great smile. What you do is you go, oh, she looks great. And that’s what I wanted. I wanted to have the confidence, and I wanted, when the pictures go up, for me not to go, oh, I wish they hadn’t put that picture up.

I had an emergency extraction back here on the left side of my face here where a tooth had gotten infected, I think the term is impacted, they had it extracted. And for a while, you know, I knew I eventually wanted that tooth replaced, I was in my early 20s, I didn’t want to go the rest of my life with a gap in my teeth. But they were able to help prepare for that eventual implant by putting some sort of packing in there so I still had good bone health. Knowing that the eventual plan was for an implant, a number of years later, new insurance, new time where I was able to actually get an implant.

So, of course, I came back to Dr. Hansen knowing that he had been certified, you know, in doing the dental implants, and he made me feel safe every time I’ve been here cared for, so I knew it was going to be a good job. So, yeah, we went through the process of getting the implant in there, and hopefully, I’ll never have to have another one. But throughout the whole process, you know, it’s a couple-week process as you put the stud in there and it heals and then you get the actual tooth that goes onto it put in. It was all fairly painless when you think about you’re sticking something in your mouth that didn’t belong there. It honestly was one of the most…the easiest procedures I’ve had done.

There are other things that we talked about briefly, like being able to do, I think they call it a bridge, where they go across multiple teeth and it just kind of hangs there, but it’s not rooted to the bone in your gum, and so that part over time can still recede because there’s nothing, you know, tying it there, nothing keeping that bone health in that missing tooth area healthy.
And so knowing that the…how early I was in getting an implant and how long I wanted it, you know, the options just made sense to go ahead and do the implant. And when you look at the cost overall, it wasn’t that much different. So it just made more sense to do that. And Dr. Hansen was really helpful in helping explain the different treatment options and what he would recommend. I don’t even think about it. It’s my tooth. I mean, it’s like I have always had it there. The implant itself is perfect. I mean, it just feels like one of every other tooth you’ve had.

The reason why I love this practice, I mean, I first found them when I had a really, really bad pain with one of my teeth. They’d become impacted, became infected, and there is no pain like dental pain at all. It is awful. And so when I was looking, you know, this has happened on a weekend, of course, when everyone’s closed. I’ve been looking to see is there anyone that’s open, anyone that’s able to help, and I found that Palouse View Dental, Dr. Hansen makes his personal cell phone number available for anyone to reach out to him during those off-hours for those sorts of dental emergencies.

So, reached out and said, hey, this is awful. This is unbearable. I can’t do anything. I can’t focus at all. And they were willing. Thankfully, we didn’t have to because there were some other measures, but I mean, the fact that he was willing to come in when he’s closed, you know, and do this kind of emergency extraction was something that really stood out to me a lot from any other provider I’ve worked with. So it was that level of care for his patients in the community that I really latched onto right away. And by the time I got in that first thing Monday morning, people were able to shift their schedules around. And I mean, it was not normal the amount of care that they placed.

My wife started coming after that first experience. We needed a new family dentist in general, but after the care I had received here, it’s a pretty strong advocate. We’re gonna go here. And she’s always had a great experience here as well.