hi bryanna,

i went to my gen. dentist this morning. he xrayed the tooth & found the source of the pain...it has the beginning of an abcess & when he pressed the gum just above it, it killed! i have started taking amoxicillin & will stay on it until the infection abates.

he said i could go a couple of ways: extract the remaining teeth, leaving me no upper teeth at al, then creating a denture & voila!

second option is to extract the 2 central incisors and replace them along with the missing right quadrant with a "partial" but keeping the failing remainder left side bridge but he cannot predict if the bridge will last or just keep failing.

so the dilemma involves choosing one of these two scenarios. a third possibility is to get implants and use them to anchor fake teeth. to my mind this will be very costly and much more time consuming than a denture or a partial.

thanks again for your in depth analysis and sharing your expertise with me.