MY EXPERIENCES WITH DENTISTS

BY JON NELSON

 
I have been a trombone player since Junior High school days, and I always had bad teeth.  This eventually necessitated my getting dentures in 1978.  I was worried that I would not be able to perform as well with a foreign object in my mouth, but my original dentist was wonderful and very professional.  I eventually adapted to the dentures and was able to perform as well as before.

Since that time, I have had seven different dentures.  In 2005, I had a new one made up, which I wore without any performance issues until the beginning of 2012.  At that point, the denture developed a small crack which grew and eventually broke off a small corner of the denture.  Despite this, I was still able to eat and play my music.  I brought it to the same dentist who made it, and the denture was repaired and relined.  Much to my surprise, I was absolutely unable to play my trombone after the relining, and I went back for a re-adjustment.  This too was ineffective.  I literally went back to this dentist twenty-three times (yes, I counted), and, while the denture was fairly comfortable, I was totally unable to play without cracking notes and experiencing technical problems that made me sound like a sixth grade beginner.  You might well appreciate my frustration at the dentist’s inability to solve the problem.

When a close friend recommended Green Dental in Sherman Oaks, California, I decided to give them a try.  My previous dentist was generally competent, but twenty three visits left me convinced that modern dentistry is no longer able to produce a satisfactory denture for brass players.  Even so, I went to Green Dental to make sure that I was right about this.  I told Dr. Twersky right off the bat about my conclusions, and he stated with confidence that he would be able to make me a denture that I could use, and promised me a refund if he could not.  This sounded like too good a deal to pass up, so I agreed.

However, I should have gotten the agreement in writing!  My experience at Green Dental proved identical to my experience with my previous dentist, with additional unpleasant twists.  After about twelve visits (I returned twenty-three times, the exact same number of times that I returned to my previous dentist), I told Twersky that I was now convinced I was correct that modern dentistry has completely failed me and that they have lost the ability to make a denture a brass player can use.  At that point, he began to make some easily refuted rationalizations to the contrary.  He told me that, as we get older, our gums shrink, and so this is probably the source of my problems.  I told him that, since there was less than a one-week window between the time I took in my original denture and the time it was first relined, my gums could not have shrunk during those few days.  I told him that I was able to perform quite well with the previous denture, even though it was ill-fitting and eventually cracked.  Although the new denture fits well, it is useless to me for my musical needs.  Obviously my conclusions were correct: modern dentistry is doing something fundamentally different with regard to making dentures than they were doing in 2005.

After telling this to Dr. Twersky, he never saw me again, and another doctor dealt with me from that point onward.  The issue of a refund was, not surprisingly, never brought up.  On my final visit, my complaints about the denture were ignored altogether, and the doctor in attendance insisted that X-rays needed to be done.  Afterwards, I was informed that I needed some major dental work done, unrelated to the denture, which would cost me $1900.00.  At that point, I walked out, never to return, and found another dentist who also ran X-rays, but who was unable to find anything wrong that required this kind of work and expenditure.

I have obviously given up on dentistry’s being able to give me a denture that will enable me to play the trombone adequately again; until the field of dentistry can admit their error and that their “new and improved” method of denture making is an abject failure and is willing to go back to the way they made them in the past, I harbor no illusions that I will ever be able to perform in public again.