The Tooth Saga: My Dental Implant Crowns Have Arrived. Unfortunately, They Don’t Fit.

Eighteen months into what has become less of a dental treatment plan and more of a long-running medical drama with disappointing production values, my dental implant crowns were finally supposed to deliver the finale.

The implant anchors have been sitting in my jaw for six months, quietly bonding with the bone and preparing for their big moment. The braces were nearly ready to come off. The crowns had been made. I had even visited the dental technician so he could match the colour properly, because apparently my mouth now requires the kind of bespoke craftsmanship usually reserved for sports cars and royal furniture.

I collected the crowns and took them to my dentist, fully expecting to leave with actual teeth.

That was adorable of me.

For three hours, my dentist pushed, pulled, adjusted, unscrewed, rescrewed, frowned, squinted and tried every possible angle short of hanging me upside down from the ceiling.

The crowns did not fit.

Not “they need a tiny adjustment” did not fit. Not “bite down once more” did not fit. They simply refused to attach to the implant anchors that have been waiting patiently in my skull since spring.

THE FUCKING TEETH DON’T FIT.

At some point, the technician who actually made the crowns arrived at the dentist’s office to investigate. This was no longer a dental appointment. It had become forensic dentistry.

The manufacturer had joined the installation team to determine whether the product was faulty or whether someone was screwing it in wrong. Three people were now gathered around one mouth, each increasingly offended by the laws of physics.

It felt like calling Bosch customer service because your dishwasher door won’t close, only for the engineer to arrive, watch the installer wrestle with it, and eventually say, “Well. That shouldn’t be happening.”

I lay there wondering whether I should ask for a loyalty card. Ten failed installations and the next anaesthetic is free.

Then came the tools.

Tiny screwdrivers. Tiny ratchets. Tiny torque wrenches. An entire miniature garage appeared beside my head. Every few seconds there was another metallic click, scrape or deeply unsettling clack from somewhere inside my skull.

It felt as if someone were repairing a very small bicycle in my mouth.

Then it escalated into a Formula 1 pit stop.

BOX, BOX, BOX!

The dentist leaned in from one side. The technician approached from the other. Instruments changed hands. Torque was measured. Everyone worked with the intense urgency of a team trying to send a damaged car back onto the track before the safety car came in.

Except I was the car.

And the replacement parts still didn’t fit.

By hour three, I no longer felt fully human. I had metal anchors in my jaw, precision engineering tools clicking inside my head and multiple professionals debating torque settings over my open mouth.

I THINK I’M A CYBORG NOW.

Not a sleek, intimidating one. More like a Cybertruck that has been recalled because the panels don’t line up.

The final verdict: the crowns have to be remade.

That means another two-week wait. It also means the braces cannot come off as planned, because apparently every part of this dental saga has signed a contract agreeing never to resolve itself in a single episode.

So I left after three hours with exactly the same number of usable teeth I had when I arrived, plus a numb face, a sore jaw and fresh knowledge of how much torque can safely be applied to the inside of a human head.

Three hours. Three people. One mouth. Zero successful installations.

The Tooth Saga continues.

Apparently.