For the First Time in Years, I Am Enjoying Eating Food. It feels great!
One of the only upsides to taking such terrible care of your teeth that you pay someone at a dental clinic with the word “Affordable” in its name to remove every last rotted, gnarled tooth in your mouth so you can be fitted with dentures is that you lose a lot of weight. A lot of weight.
I was never remotely happy with my dentures, in part because I could never forget that I was a man in his mid-forties with dentures. That made me feel very old, very feeble, and very incompetent.
When I got my dentures, I was a little chubby. That changed dramatically because I suddenly found the prospect of eating not just unappealing but downright nauseating.
I would look at a hot pile of food that would have thrilled me at various points in my life and feel nothing but a vague sense of disgust.
My dramatic, more or less accidental weight loss was attributable to other factors as well. I’ve been on the antidepressant Wellbutrin for a few years now. It was good for my then-undiagnosed and untreated ADHD in that it gave me some get-up-and-go when I needed it most. Along with an unhealthy amount of Mountain Dew, Wellbutrin put a little pep in my step. Then, as is the case with most medication, it stopped being effective because I built up a strong tolerance for it. I should probably go on Adderall, but that’s the subject for another blog post.
Better yet, I could just talk about shit like that with my wife, doctor, and psychiatrist. Oh well. It's too late for me to edit that out.
I suddenly had no desire to eat because of the intense discomfort and shame of needing dentures as a man still in his mid-40s.
I was locked in a vicious cycle. I didn’t want to eat because I was stuck in a deep, dark, lengthy depression. Not eating only worsened my depression, which was pretty damn bad at that point.
Over a period of months, I lost about 60 pounds. I’m a little over six feet tall and got down to about 170 pounds.
I had deeply ambivalent feelings about my weight loss. It felt nice being thin, but I desperately wished that I could enjoy food. For human beings such as myself, eating is a major source of pleasure and joy.
Not having that pleasure in my life made everything more difficult. I like eating food. It killed me that I had no appetite and no capacity to truly enjoy a nosh with my faulty dentures and appetite and hope-sapping depression.
Ah, but this is NOT going to be another blog post about me being miserable and broke and just barely holding on. Well, obviously, it’s at least partially about that, but what it’s really about is that FOR THE FIRST TIME IN YEARS, I ENJOY EATING FOOD!
It’s fucking great, is what it is. I find myself thinking about food I’d like to eat and feeling hungry and excited. It feels so good to be hungry again.
I have many of y’all to thank, because kind folks took pity on me and my dental nightmare and contributed generously to a GoFundMe (that’s still up, incidentally) to help pay for life-changing but extremely expensive dental implants that cost around fifty thousand dollars before interest.
I had to stop smoking pot, something I’d done nightly for three decades, and pony up an obscene amount of money for the dental implants. I haven’t regretted the decision for a second.
The surgery did wonders for my self-esteem and quality of life. I started to feel like a vigorous young man instead of an old codger with fake teeth.
Getting dental implants was one of the best decisions of my life. As always, I was better off trusting my wife’s instincts and judgment rather than my own, because I am wrong A LOT.
I had to stick to soft food for the first four months after my dental implants surgery. That was surprisingly easy, as three of the core staples of my diet are Mountain Dew, milkshakes and soup.
Did I mention that I lost 60 pounds? That’s probably because I only consumed Mountain Dew, milkshakes and soup, and sometimes I forgot the whole “soup” thing. Soup is delicious but lacks the sugar and caffeine plants crave.
I’ve only been able to eat non-soft food for the last two weeks or so, and I have to say: it's fucking great. I love it!
When I lost my taste for food (even the really tasty stuff), I also lost some of my taste for life.
Getting dentures before implants made me appreciate the majesty of food. With permanent teeth that look amazing and work very well, I can eat ANYTHING I WANT.
Today, I ate ribs. Ribs! I sure as shit couldn’t do that with my dentures.
Getting dental implants was a major win for me. I’m so happy and grateful. I never want to take my nifty teeth and renewed appetite for granted because I know from firsthand experience just how grim things can get when you completely lose your ability to enjoy food.
Nathan needed expensive, life-saving dental implants, and his dental plan doesn’t cover them, so he started a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants. Give if you can!
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