Hi, I am Alison. I am a patient at Scharrington Dental. I had a full upper and lower arch supported by dental implants, including four cycle implants. I have always had dental phobia, I have always had great sensitivity to my teeth. I have also had extensive restoration. It had again failed, meaning that I was at the point where I was looking at getting my teeth extracted and getting dentures because of the pain and the cost. The hybrid dentures was interesting to me and I’d seen the commercials and I went and talked to my dentist at the time about this option. He was hesitant, but then he recommend his friend, an oral surgeon – I didn’t really care for the oral surgeon, but again I was in a rush I wanted this done, and I felt like the less I knew with my phobia, the better I would do. Boy, was I wrong!
The surgery was supposed to be 4 to 5 hours, where it would be an upper and lower, and the possibility of a zygoma implant and it ended up being 10. It was the nightmare that I thought would always happen, and it literally changed my life for the worse and I had so many courses of antibiotics that they said you have to have one of these removed, and I was just devastated, so I reached out, and I looked into other people that were Specialists and everybody refused.
I felt alone and unsupported and just hopeless, and then I said to myself you know what? I am a board-certified internist. I am going to find a board-certified Prosthodontist! And I looked and I looked and I saw Dr. Joon Han and I read his profile and I said, no maybe this is the real light, maybe this is what I need.
Dr. Han was the only one out of 20 oral surgeons and dentists and Prosthodontists and all the people I had reached out to, who agreed to help me. When he gave me the treatment plan, it was not forced at me – there wasn’t the ‘you must have this much money’. It was kind of like – this is what we are going to do, and it is a journey, journey is here: we have got to get a panorex, we have got to see what is going on, and then journey number 2 is those prosthetics they don’t fit you, you need new ones. So do we work with what we have? Well, we have to see that the implant is stable and I’m starting to understand it. So the day of the surgery, they went to look, and all four of them on the lower fell out. Not just one, all four had failed, and Dr. Han and Dr. Paul took the effort to fix all four of them at that same time.
The difference in the surgeries was – I can’t even describe it to you. My husband was there. He was part of it – all the questions were answered. We had a picture of these massive zygoma things. We had a picture of, you know my blood pressure, my vitals – everything was stable. When I had the replacement and all the new hardware, the fit was amazing, and I still struggle with this because it is so beautiful. You know I have the teeth, I have the ability to talk, I don’t have the air leaks this is the teeth that I am going to have for the rest of my life – they don’t hurt, they’re beautiful I know how to take care of them and I get to go to my favorite dentist, Dr. Han.
