Patient story · Anxiety
'I had more anxiety handling a rattlesnake than getting my teeth done'
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Caesi found handling a rattlesnake more nerve-racking than getting her teeth done.
Before
Caesi had good teeth. She wore braces for three years, her teeth were straight afterward, and she had no serious trouble until her late thirties.
Then she got pregnant at 37, and things fell apart quickly.
"During the pregnancy, my teeth — which were straight — he depleted everything. My teeth started breaking."
She already had two bridges. One cracked. She could not keep it in with anything she tried.
She was waitressing at the time, and this was about more than looks.
"When I would say something with an S or an F, like one would fly."
She had already spent a lot on work that was never finished, including a temporary bridge for seventy-five hundred dollars and crowns she couldn't yet afford.
"I told my manager, I need a break. I'm going to call my fiancé and we are going to book a consultation."
Choosing
She had been reading implant discussion groups for a while and kept seeing the same worry come up.
"I saw the horror stories people were having when they go out of the United States — if you have a problem or an issue, you have to go back, because the chances are of somebody here working on something that was done out of the States is slim to none."
She found us through another woman who had posted about her own treatment.
"When I saw that it was in Florida, I got on y'all's page and I was just like — oh my gosh, they are so much cheaper than everywhere I've been quoted."
She and her partner had just paid off their cars.
"I said, well, this can be my car payment."
The surgery
She had twenty-three teeth removed and eight implants placed across both arches. She was awake throughout on oral sedation, which was what she had dreaded most.
"That was what I was most scared of. I just knew that when you started drilling, I was going to feel it."
She didn't feel it.
"Two hours and everything was done. I was amazed."
She has a comparison few people can make.
"When I tell you I had more anxiety than getting my teeth done — when I heard that rattle in that box."
That was her first day of snake handling training. The rattlesnake was called Cupcake.
Two days later, a nature trail
She got her first set of teeth on day two and went straight out on a nature hike.
She was back at work in the second week.
The ninety days, taken slowly
She stayed on her soft diet for six months instead of three. That was her own choice.
She ate potatoes, a lifelong weakness of hers, ground beef and a surprising amount of dessert.
She also has a handy trick from her years in restaurants:
"If you do fried chicken tenders, okay, they’re a little hard to cut with a plastic fork. But if you get your favorite teriyaki sauce — I would put the tenders in the box and get like a big five ounce and pour the tiger sauce, and I would shake the box up, let them sit for a little bit so that the crust gets soft, and then I would just cut them and dip them in ranch and eat them very slowly."
She avoided salad and thick bread, and had her first salad at about four months.
She had expected trouble with her speech and had none at all.
Now
She relocates venomous snakes, including cottonmouths, timber rattlesnakes and eastern diamondbacks, and runs a Facebook community of around fourteen thousand people built around explaining why they matter.
"One full-grown adult eastern diamondback rattlesnake can eat up to two hundred rodents, rabbits, things that carry ticks — that's anywhere between twenty-five hundred to forty-five hundred ticks."
She took it on when the man who had been doing it was posted overseas, trained with a conservancy in Jacksonville, and has been doing it since.
She now works full time in real estate, where almost all of her work is face to face.
"People will say, you just got the most beautiful teeth. And I'm like, thanks — they're not mine. Well, yeah they are. I paid for them."
What she says to other people
People ask her questions all the time, mostly people who found her through the snakes and then noticed her smile.
"A lot of people are quiet and they won't speak up. And I'll post and say — hey, you can do this. Reach out to me."
Ask her why not dentures, and she'll tell you straight.
"I'm thirty-nine years old. I have a friend and she has dentures and every couple of years she has to go back and get them resized and they're cutting into her gums and she's bleeding and in pain. Why wouldn't you do a permanent solution with a lifetime warranty?"
Outcomes vary from person to person.
This page was built from the recording of Ep. 8. The quotations are edited to read on the page: filler words taken out, repeated words dropped, a dash for a hesitation or for words left out. Nothing added, nothing reordered, nothing put in the speaker's mouth.