You know how the dentist always told you to floss, or else? Well, they weren't just telling you this for kicks. Poor dental hygiene can lead to some very serious problems. Some very serious, gross problems that no one wants to deal with.
Granted, genetics play a part in dental health, as it does in health in general, but we can all do our best to prevent dental disaster. Teeth plopping out of gums is what nightmares are made of.
Some people, however, neglect to care for their teeth for much longer than the recommended six- to 12-month time period. When that happens, dentists and hygienists are in for a huge treat. And, by treat, I mean horror.
If these nine stories from dental health professionals aren't enough to make you stock up on mouthwash, floss, and a high quality toothbrush, I have no idea what is.
Can you believe these tales? Do you have any dental horror stories yourself? Let us know in the comments and please SHARE with your friends and family!
Thumbnail source: Flickr / locomomo
1.
"Dentist for 34 years… About 20 years ago, this lady came into the office asking to clean her teeth. When I looked into her mouth, on the inside of her lower front teeth, she had so much tartar that there were no gums around the teeth. Only the tartar kept her teeth in her mouth." – schmanwich
2.
"A regular patient of ours came in, all seemed normal… As soon as they sat in the chair and uttered an 'ahh' at my request, I saw that since their last visit, most of their teeth had been nearly rotten all the way through, not even kidding. I swear one of the back molars was hollow. Long story short, they now need dentures." – LyingFor-Karma
3.
"We once pulled a bit of old rotting chicken out from under somebody's implant denture. It smelled like Satan's fart." – C-O-N
4.
"Pulled out a patient's dentures and they were covered in mold. Yep, the patient was wearing moldy dentures." – Poke-hey-mon
5.
"Was briefly confused by a metal filling I didn't know was there. In actual fact, it was a remnant of the foil wrapper from the illicit Kit-Kat sneaked from the kitchen earlier." – winterandautumn
6.
"Once pulled out what looked like a pubic hair from between a patient's teeth. We just looked at each other and said nothing." – ponte92
7.
"I dated a dentist. He was telling me about a patient that had an abscess so large that when he lanced it, there was like a volcano eruption of pus coming out of his mouth." – judyduty
8.
"I'm not even going to go into the details, but a live bug flew out of a socket in her gum, where a tooth had rotted out. A living bug. Why." – WhatShouldIDoNoSleep
9.
"I've pulled teeth that are literally squishy (due to decay). Grabbing these with forceps is like squeezing a little white bean." – Assimilation
I don't know about you, but I'm never going to look at a white bean in the same way again. I'm also going to give my teeth an extra thorough cleaning as soon as possible. Let us know your horror stories in the comments and please SHARE with your family and friends if you think they should all go floss right now!
These stories are based on posts found on Reddit. Reddit is a user-generated social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where registered members submit content to the site and can up- or down-vote the content. The accuracy and authenticity of each story cannot be confirmed by our staff.
