Patient story · Years later
Three years later: 'I almost cancelled two weeks before'
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Kelly, three years on, who almost canceled two weeks before.
Before
Kelly had known for years that her teeth needed work. She just never had the right moment.
Then it came all at once. She and her husband moved from Michigan to Tennessee, she stepped back from ten years of coaching volleyball as her sons moved into their own sports, and for the first time there was a gap.
"It just kind of lined up with what was going on in my personal life where I could do it. We had the money. I had the time. I wasn't pressured to go back to work."
She found us on TikTok in 2021, watching videos posted by a member of our team who had been through the procedure herself six months earlier.
"Her story seems very similar to mine. I just started down the rabbit hole and did the research. And I'm like, OK, this looks legit. But honestly — is this really real?"
Nearly not
She did her consultation from a parking lot, while waiting on a sushi order that was running late.
Two weeks before surgery, she almost backed out.
"I almost canceled two weeks before. I was like, I don't know. Because this can't be undone. You know, I'm like, done in one. It can't be undone. You can't just put the teeth back in my mouth."
The research she had done got her through.
"Once I do the research and I know, I'm like, OK, I'm good. Mind over matter. This is happening. This is going to change my life."
Her sister flew down from Michigan and stayed the week with her.
The week
She took the travel package and doesn't regret it.
"What's another three thousand dollars. I'm like, whatever. And I'm not from here and I'm like, I don't know how I'm going to feel. I'm probably going to feel pretty crappy afterward. I don't want to have to drive a car. I don't want to have to know where I'm going. I don't - I'm doing none of it."
Of surgery day she remembers arriving, taking the oral sedation, and a plant beside her in the waiting room that seemed to be moving.
"I was like, is this plant moving? I started really getting gloomy quick. And I was like, well, it's done deal from here."
Her sister flew home on Saturday. Kelly got her final zirconia teeth on Monday and flew home an hour later.
The ninety days
She was careful, more careful than she needed to be.
"I pushed it to 120 days because I was just nervous."
What she missed surprised us.
"Sounds really bad. It was salad. I'm a big green person. That I missed the most."
Her best find on the soft diet was roasted buffalo cauliflower, which she made when she got tired of eating the same things. She shared the recipe with other patients in our community group.
On day ninety she was in Nashville with her mother-in-law, and ordered nachos.
"I have a video of me ordering nacho chips at this bar. And I'm like, it's 90. It's 90 days. And I'm crunching."
Three years on
She has had no implant problems at all.
"Zero issues. No issues whatsoever."
A few months after treatment she went back to work in staffing and sales, a job she now does almost entirely on video calls.
"I still had those moments where I wasn't used to seeing myself on camera. And I'm like, wow, your teeth look great. It was the opposite."
What she talks about most is how other people react.
"My husband and I will go get a glass of wine or go to dinner, and people are always commenting — and then my husband's just like, when someone compliments you, you just light up. It's from what I saw you go through all these years, it's like completely worth it."
Coming back
Kelly flies down every February for her maintenance visit and treats it as a getaway.
"I always look forward to February. You get through the holidays, Christmas is over, and it's great to get out of Knoxville."
People ask whether she'd rather have her yearly cleaning done closer to home.
"I don't think I would trust anyone else. They didn't do it. They don't know."
When the Lifetime Warranty launched, she signed up, and she knows why. Her original coverage was five years.
"I wasn't worried for five years. What I was worried about was in fifteen years, as I get older — what's going to happen then? Am I going to be paying the same amount of money I paid to have this done, to fix things?"
Where she is
Born and raised in Michigan, an hour south of Grand Rapids. She and her husband moved to Knoxville in 2022 after a vacation won them over, and she has no plans to go back to the cold.
She has two teenage sons, both deep in travel sports, so the family is rarely home. She also has an older daughter and a granddaughter who is one and a half.
"I'm a fancy. I'm not a grandma. I'm a fancy."
Outcomes vary from person to person.
This page was built from the recording of Ep. 43. 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.