A friend of mine...
...has a titanium implant in place of one of her teeth, which she got when she was in her teens. Not cheap - a grand and a half if I remember rightly. Parents paid of course.

The reason she has the implant? She'd been to the dentist and was told she'd have to have a tooth out as it had a rotten root. Not great news, but not the end of the world either.

Said friend unfortunately didn't like the idea of the dentist removing her tooth, so in her infinite wisdom (aha, see what I did!) decided to set upon loosening and removing the tooth herself - wiggling and waggling it with some vigor and a lot of determination. And eventually she managed to extract it on her own. 'HOORAY!' she must have thought.

But oh no...

Now I suppose it's an easy mistake to make, but seriously, if you're going to do something as extreme as pulling out one of your own teeth then MAKE SURE IT'S THE RIGHT BLOODY ONE.

The tooth that SHOULD have come out was one of those middly, unimportant ones. The gap would have closed naturally and it wouldn't have been a problem.

The one she plucked out? A front incisor.

Somehow she managed to conceal the truth and, indeed, the tooth from her parents. (I have no idea what the dentist thought - I like to imagine he shook his head in disbelief and sighed a lot.)

Home dentistry...it comes with a price. £1,500 in this particular case.
( The Helpful Bear, Thu 2 Nov 2006, 18:36, Reply)