Quote:
Originally Posted by cromag
Yep. I have enamel dysplasia and passed it along to my kids. (We often laugh about how unfair genetics has been to them!)
On the other hand, they had the benefit of flouride treatment, enamel sealants, etc., and their teeth have fared much (much!) better than mine! Seriously, dental hygienists lectured me on the proper way to brush my teeth at each and every appointment (which were frequent, given the number of cavities I had) even though I insisted that I was brushing them!
When my son was three and problems started showing up the dentist said, "Oh, yeah. Enamel dysplasia. We can handle that."
Gotta love progress!
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I certainly do. I date from before flouride treatment, enamel sealants and the like, so I had rather more problems than someone might have currently.
But on different lines, when my mother died, she was legally blind from macular degeneration. She lived in Philadelphia, whose Wills Eye Hospital is one of the premium centers for eye problems in the world, but they had no effective treatment.
I found myself with wet macular degeneration in my right eye, but now there
is treatment. In my case, a blood vessel had burst being the retina in the center of my visual field, and distorted the retina. I got injections of Avstatin, a drug originally developed to fight cancer. It stopped the bleeding and shrank the distortion. I still have blurring in that eye, but my brain compensates by using the left eye's vision for that part of what I see. For the most part, I'm unaware of it. (I was amused by the fact that Avstatin is considered an experimental treatment, and I had to sign a form every visit stating I understood that before I could get treatment.)
Going blind when I got old was a background concern given my mother's experience, and vision is entirely too important to me. If I
did go blind, I'm not sure how much I'd want to continue living. Knowing that's less likely is a considerable comfort.
______
Dennis