Re: I'm happy for ya

You've got a lot of amalgam, numberwise. Go slow with it. I'd only have 3 - 4 done at a time, and put four months between each visit. My doc overfilled one of my teeth with porcelain, which caused all the biting force on one side of my mouth to bear on the root of that one tooth, which caused an infection at the root. I finally went in and had another dude grind off the excess filling material. He offered me a root canal referral, as he didn't think my tooth would make it in his experience (he's 55 y.o.). I beat the infection without any medication and that tooth is happy.

I think the hardest part is in getting the new filling material properly placed, so there is no excess that will cause similar problem as to what I had encountered. The teeth are mutable, even in a 50 y.o. My # 16 was actually caused to rotate about 20 degrees from the adjacent one having been overfilled and the way it affected my bite. The dentist can't know if a tooth is overfilled or not. They do their best, but they just can't know. It's up to the patient to be insistent on getting it right, which in my experience takes about three iterations of telling the dude to grind more, becuase they tend to be conservative. I was tempted to not hassle him with asking for him to grind more, thinking it would wear off in time, but it didn't. Be insistent. If the dentist acts impatient, fire him.