It was worth the wait…

The events of this year have affected everyone. For most of us this has resulted in delaying proposed plans that we may have had for the year, such as holidays and weddings. It just wasn’t possible to do these things during the lockdown.

Our dental practice, like every other in the UK, was forced to close during the lockdown which meant everyone’s treatment was paused. An immediate pause button was hit on the ability to provide face to face care. As a practice, we still helped our patients via non face to face methods to enable them to still have the care they deserved. But obviously, we couldn’t do any physical treatment which meant treatment plans were delayed.

For some patients this meant that their life changing dental care plan had to wait a little bit longer for completion.

I treated this lovely lady for her implant surgery on Friday 20th March – the last day before we had the lockdown. The good news for our patient was that the treatment had been performed successfully and all she now had to do was wait for the next phase of her treatment. The lenght of time she would have to wait was uncertain and in the end it turned out to be almost 3 months. She had been suffering with loose and missing teeth for over 8 years and over the last few years she was busy undergoing treatment for cancer. This meant that she had already experienced delays to her dental treatment in the past and 3 more months of waiting was certainly something she could manage. However, being so close to having your life changing dental care completed can be frustrating and I certainly sympathised with her.

When we finally completed this treatment last week, the patient was ecstatic. She had suffered with missing and loose teeth for so long. She had lost so much weight since it was so hard for her to eat properly. She had very little confidence in her smile and she had learned to be incredibly patient. As soon as the new teeth were all fitted, the transformation was immeidate. She looked great and seeing her smile with such confidence made me feel great too! It was an emotional and long journey but it was worth it! This will transform our patient’s life for the better. She can eat, speak and smile with total confidence again!