Bone grafts to save Haley's teeth

Okay here goes. Without going into a very long, confusing, and probably boring history, lets just say I have had a very rocky medical journey. I am going to post a more complete (though EXTREMELY summarized) version of the medical history surrounding this at the bottom of this post, as a number of people have asked. And I am happy to share more with anyone who might be interested, but in an effort to make this an easy read I'll just get straight to the situation it has now placed me in.

I don't know any way to say this other than just saying it. I am about to lose my teeth. This is no longer a "one day" or "it might happen situation" the timeline has come to an end and this is my last chance at saving my teeth. I raised a fair bit of money when we first made this site, but because it didn't even come close to covering all of the work that was needed, the money was not spent, as I would have felt TERRIBLE putting your loving gifts into a mouth that was just going to end up in the same state again. Over the past little while though it became increasingly evident that things were going downhill fast "“ so fast that financially I can not even begin to fix the problems.

Hereès the situation now: I have been to see three different dentists, as well as a doctor and am awaiting an appointment with the periodonist. All agree that the prognosis is not good, this has to be fixed or it will no longer be fixable. This is fast approaching becoming not just a dental issue, but a medical one as well, as the infection and decay are deep into my bone and bordering on nerves at this point.

I have spent the last moth talking to dentists, doctors, and a periodontist here in town. I have begged and I have pleaded to help me find a way out of this that doesnt leave me about 30,000 away from healing my mouth. I cannot find any. I have worked incredibly hard to keep going throughout my life, but while I have the ability to wake up every morning and trust that God will give me the strength for whatever the day holds, financially I have very little control at this point, and no options moving forward in this situation without some kind of help.


Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, even just your prayers are incredibly appreciated.


-Haley

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A summarized medical history:

I was born with a malrotation of my intestine/bowel. This could technically be largely without symptoms, and not really have any effect on my medical history except that in my case we had no idea that this was even the case until I was almost 12 and was hospitalized for a fully blocked bowel. So from the very start I was prone to a great amount of pain and frequent vomiting. My small intestine has an unusually narrow base, and therefore the intestine is prone to volvulus (which in my best description I guess is a "twisting" that can obstruct my digestive track...) I underwent two surgeries, one at 12 and one at 17 both were due to blockages of my bowel. after the last surgery my symptoms were fairly under control for awhile, but by about 20 they were back in full force. and ultimately I was diagnosed with both Crohns disease and ulcerative colitis by specialists in Vancouver (dr.bressler), and Victoria (Dr.Singh).
"Healthy teeth" do not run in my family, and because I was throwing up consistently basically from the time I even had teeth, they did not grow well. at 4 I had all of my molars crowned because the acid wear was already so bad that they didn't think they would even last until they naturally fell out and were replaced with adult ones. My parents did not have jobs that included medical coverage so until I was 16 and got my own medical plan my teeth were largely ignored but continued to be bathed regularly with acid as I was really REALLY struggling with digestive issues; at times even keeping down liquids was a feat.

At about 23 my Crohns disease got REALLY bad. I wont go into graphic specifics but nothing was working, and as a final attempt to get it under control I was put on Prednisone. 60 mg doses for almost a full year. Had I known what that would do to my body I would never have taken it. Prednisone left my body in a very, very bad position bone-wise.While steroids DO decrease inflammation, and make you feel virtually symptom free while you continue to take them, they also decrease the formation of new bone, increase the breakdown of old bone, and decrease the absorption of calcium from food by the body. After the steroid treatment ended the worst of the dental began, a few months after stopping treatment three of my front teeth broke off, almost at the gum lines. I cashed in my RRSP at that time as it was my only way of coming up with enough money to cap my front teeth. then two of my back molars broke. i had one root canal and the other pulled, however shortly after the root canal that tooth also was extracted as it broke again, much further down this time.

a few months after having the top 6 capped I again lost two of those teeth. i was certain that this would be covered as I had just paid almost $8000 but the dentist was adamant that it was not his work, but my bone's inability to hold the crowns that had failed. I was then told that I would need implants if i wanted to ensure that the teeth would remain secure, but at this point I had used literally every single bit of my savings and had also already tapped into my mothers RRSP in order to re-cement the crowns that had fallen out.

In January I relocated from Victoria to Campbell river. I lost my dental plan due to the fact that I moved in order to leave an extremely abusive relationship. When I got here I went to see a dentist as I was having a lot of pain in several areas of my mouth, I knew that there were big problems but I had avoided the dentist for quite some time because as much as I knew that the problems were extensive I also had no source of income, or any sort of medical plan to help with the cost. Many, many months of dental decisions have taken place between that time and now. I have been fighting a losing battle trying to take care of one problem area at a time and eventually I even made an appointment to talk about dentures, by now completely convinced that my best course of action was to simply have my teeth extracted and start from a clean slate. At this point I felt like I was being forced to choose the absolute worst scenario.

At that meeting I was almost immediately shot down. The dentist straight up told me that there was absolutely no way he would pull my teeth, and that for a number of reasons he doesn't think that I could even find another dentist who would. Bone deteriorates naturally over time, even without other problems, from what I understand, based on the way my bone has shrunken in an extremely short amount of time when teeth have previously been extracted, if a dentist were to extract all of my teeth there would almost be literally nothing to hold onto dentures. On top of that, of the three dentists I have talked to here in town, even if the bone problem did not exist, not even one is willing to extract the teeth from a 27 year old's mouth, even from just an ethical perspective (these are their words, not mine, as I was fairly resigned to the fact that no teeth were better than a rotting jaw).

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Please note: that any donations made here are sent to my Mom (Sharon Floen)'s paypal account