Healthy Teeth, Healthy Felicia

Felicia was born with a chronic medical condition called Marshall Syndrome. This condition is essentially a deficiency in collagen and bone growth. Long story short, this has contributed to failure of almost all of her teeth and massive infection has begun to brew inside of her mouth and throughout her body.

In May 2024, Felicia had an emergency surgery after bad teeth caused a nearly fatal abscess to form inside of her air way.

Since May 2024, dentists, doctors and surgeons all agree that the best and only practical answer to giving Felicia long-term functionality is to remove all of what is left of her natural teeth and replace with permanent implants.

As you can probably imagine, the costs associated with this kind of operation are astronomical. The total cost is estimated to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $130,000. This covers removing the teeth and putting the implants in at an operating room at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, which is necessary due to other complications Felicia faces when being put to sleep for operations of this nature. These costs also cover the oral surgeon, the prosthodontist, the new teeth and all other medical costs associated.

While we pray her medical insurance company sees and appreciates the medical necessity of this operation and covers part of the expenses, we are also realistic that this is an astronomical amount of money and the only way to ensure it gets taken care of is to be proactive.

Felicia will be on a liquid diet for several weeks after the operation and then will slowly graduate to soft foods and onto foods she needs to use her teeth for. Smoothies, soups, broths, milkshakes, etc will all be staples for her during recovery. She will also be losing some of her income for a period while she recovers.

We trust God is in control and He already knows where this is coming from. We also know that while most of us can't make a massive difference by ourselves, we can all do a little bit and when we all do our part, that can add up to lessening this huge burden for Felicia.