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About 6 months ago I caught a full-swing of a stick to the right side of my mouth/jaw. Cracked my front right tooth in half and broke the next two right-most te

by evo_9 7y ago

About 6 months ago I caught a full-swing of a stick to the right side of my mouth/jaw. Cracked my front right tooth in half and broke the next two right-most teeth at the gum-line, and cracked one of my lower teeth off at the top 1/4. Neither top teeth broken at the gum could be saved/or built up so they pulled them. I also had one of my lower teeth, left of center knocked out (yes left of center, I think the top portion of the stick blade came down and slapped that part of my mouth). I picked that one up and washed it off and stuck it back in; it seems to have re-rooted. The work they did on the top teeth was pretty much the most painful, least fun medical I've ever had to go through. Pulling those two top teeth that were broke off at the gum-line was extremely unpleasant. At one point the dentist had to put her knee on the chair/left side of my ribs to get enough leverage to pull one of the two. My wife couldn't even watch and said it was like a scene from a movie. This is after playing hockey since the age of 6 (I'm 52) and not wearing a cage for roughly 30 years (since I stopped playing in college). I had a very strange desire to buy/put on a full cage a few weeks before this happened and even started to research which to buy but got interrupted and lost my traction on the whole idea. To date this has run me over 10k and I still have to get my final implants. And yes I do wear a cage now, and it's crazy how often I catch a stick/puck to the face now. I guess I used up all my karma and was getting lucky for years. I attribute this 'luck' mostly to playing with other ex-college and pro players whom generally know how to keep their stick down and in control. Incidentally the person that hit me was a female defense-men in a co-ed league; she'd played high level college and was groomed for the women's Olympic team on one point, so I don't fault her, it was a freak accident mostly caused by her being tiny (just over 5ft on skates); if she was an average sized guy out there the stick would have hit me in the half-shield or top of the helmet. Either way, yeah cage on now and I regret not making the transition sooner. Also - I give USA Hockey Organization high marks, they have so far covered about 90% of the costs and were easy to deal with. I actually lost my previous job because of all this, I also sustained a concussion (and a partially fractured jaw), and they were not very sympathetic to my drop in production so the coverage from USA Hockey has been a huge positive in all this.

nsxwolf 7y ago
"I picked that one up and washed it off and stuck it back in; it seems to have re-rooted." I am shuddering. This is Cronenberg levels of body horror. I suppose I must have known this was how it worked, but I figured there was more to it than that and that dentists had to do something more dentist-y to make it take.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  All a dentist would do would be to wipe off any large debris (as long as noxious chemicals aren't involved, you don't really even want to wash it) and then stick it back in the socket. Maybe pack some cotton rolls around it to keep it in one spot for the first 12 hours or so. Doing this on-scene ASAP is strictly better than waiting until you get to a dentist.
  - badger_bravo 7y ago
    Would it still take root if it was placed in backwards? If it was someone else's tooth? a particularly well shaped rock?
    - OnlineGladiator 7y ago
      It depends, but there's an issue of biocompatibility similar to any organ transplant. So no, a rock wouldn't work. The backwards tooth though is interesting - my guess is if it would fit it would stick (although it would definitely fuck up your bite). https://myhillsdentist.com/blog/why-dont-we-do-tooth-transplants/ https://myhillsdentist.com/blog/why-dont-we-do-tooth-transpl...
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      I wouldn't be surprised if a backwards tooth could remain viable. This is the sort of error that would be noticed immediately by any conscious patient, however. A backwards tooth would mess up occlusion. Few people would ignore the fact that they can't close their mouth completely.
- nestorD 7y ago
bena 7y ago
Ok. That was a roller coaster.
mattigames 7y ago
90%... so the total cost was around 100K? Global capitalism is a funny thing, here in my country with that money you could buy an apartment and have enough money left to get the exact same treatment you got there.
- dang 7y ago
  "Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Please see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21477839 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21477839.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
rustybelt 7y ago
Hearing this, all I can think of is how Zdeno Charing broke his jaw in multiple places in this year's Stanley Cup Final and was back the next game. Hockey players are insane.
- evo_9 7y ago
  Yeah that incident with Chara happened around the same time as mine; I had a playoff game a few nights later and played. I really love hockey so it takes a lot to keep me off the ice, which I guess probably seems pretty 'insane' to non-hockey folks. One other thing... the night it happened, the game was at 10:30 and there really isn't anything the emergency room visit can do other than provide pain meds etc. So I just drove myself home and my wife kept bugging me to go to the hospital, but I kept telling her there really was no point. The worst part of that night was trying to sleep; I actually slept clinching a rag in my mouth to keep the tooth in position and to absorb blood from the rest of the damage. The pain of the open nerves was pretty hard to deal with too. Didn't sleep much, easily the worst night of my life that I can think of. Fortunately I have an excellent dentist here in Denver (Icon Dental) and I was able to book an emergency visit for 8AM the next morning that night so I knew I just had to make it to morning.
  - soperj 7y ago
    As someone who's broke their jaw twice from pucks to the face, yours and Chara's had to be a hairline fracture. There's absolutely no way I could have played with a broken jaw. It was over 2 months of having my mouth wired shut ( liquid diet - lost 55 pounds) plus plate in my chin. It's still painful when I get a puck/stick to the cage over 15 years later.
    - selectodude 7y ago
      Chars had his jaw wired shut during the games after he broke it.
      - soperj 7y ago
        couldn't have been the same way as mine then, since you can't breath deeply at all with your mouth wired shut (i almost fainted while running after someone).
throwawayhhakdl 7y ago
Somehow the part that surprises me most is that it’s only cost you 10k, or perhaps that’s after the 90% coverage
estomagordo 7y ago
As a hockey fan who only kept playing until the junior years, I don't think I'll ever understand why anyone would play without the cage. Wouldn't you adjust to the vision distraction really quickly?
- Doxin 7y ago
  One thing I notice when googling for hockey cages is that a lot of them incorporate horizontal elements. That doesn't seem like good design to me. Your eyes are spaced horizontally. This makes it pretty easy to ignore narrow vertical elements: if one eye gets blocked there's a good chance the other eye can still see around it. The same thing doesn't go for horizontal elements. If one eye is blocked the other is likely to be blocked too: you'd need to move your head to see in that blind spot. It'd make for a pretty neat research project, Make various sight obstructing hats with varying amounts and sizes of horizontal/vertical elements and see what its effects are on reaction speed, tracking a moving target, See if diagonal elements are better than horizontal ones etc etc. In any case I can imagine a cage like that being annoying, but (to me at least) that doesn't really weigh up to the risk of injury.
  - OJFord 7y ago
    I started playing at university (UK) , and always wore a cage. Honestly, it's really only an issue when you first put it on each time, once you start skating you're really not aware of them. Like wearing glasses, I imagine. I used to play with a guy that had one of those half cages with visor top half, would be tempted to try that if I needed to replace mine, but not enough to get one before then.

by evo_9 7y ago

nsxwolf 7y ago

"I picked that one up and washed it off and stuck it back in; it seems to have re-rooted." I am shuddering. This is Cronenberg levels of body horror. I suppose I must have known this was how it worked, but I figured there was more to it than that and that dentists had to do something more dentist-y to make it take.

jessaustin 7y ago
All a dentist would do would be to wipe off any large debris (as long as noxious chemicals aren't involved, you don't really even want to wash it) and then stick it back in the socket. Maybe pack some cotton rolls around it to keep it in one spot for the first 12 hours or so. Doing this on-scene ASAP is strictly better than waiting until you get to a dentist.
- badger_bravo 7y ago
  Would it still take root if it was placed in backwards? If it was someone else's tooth? a particularly well shaped rock?
  - OnlineGladiator 7y ago
    It depends, but there's an issue of biocompatibility similar to any organ transplant. So no, a rock wouldn't work. The backwards tooth though is interesting - my guess is if it would fit it would stick (although it would definitely fuck up your bite). https://myhillsdentist.com/blog/why-dont-we-do-tooth-transplants/ https://myhillsdentist.com/blog/why-dont-we-do-tooth-transpl...
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised if a backwards tooth could remain viable. This is the sort of error that would be noticed immediately by any conscious patient, however. A backwards tooth would mess up occlusion. Few people would ignore the fact that they can't close their mouth completely.
nestorD 7y ago

bena 7y ago

Ok. That was a roller coaster.

mattigames 7y ago

90%... so the total cost was around 100K? Global capitalism is a funny thing, here in my country with that money you could buy an apartment and have enough money left to get the exact same treatment you got there.

dang 7y ago
"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Please see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21477839 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21477839.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

rustybelt 7y ago

Hearing this, all I can think of is how Zdeno Charing broke his jaw in multiple places in this year's Stanley Cup Final and was back the next game. Hockey players are insane.

evo_9 7y ago
Yeah that incident with Chara happened around the same time as mine; I had a playoff game a few nights later and played. I really love hockey so it takes a lot to keep me off the ice, which I guess probably seems pretty 'insane' to non-hockey folks. One other thing... the night it happened, the game was at 10:30 and there really isn't anything the emergency room visit can do other than provide pain meds etc. So I just drove myself home and my wife kept bugging me to go to the hospital, but I kept telling her there really was no point. The worst part of that night was trying to sleep; I actually slept clinching a rag in my mouth to keep the tooth in position and to absorb blood from the rest of the damage. The pain of the open nerves was pretty hard to deal with too. Didn't sleep much, easily the worst night of my life that I can think of. Fortunately I have an excellent dentist here in Denver (Icon Dental) and I was able to book an emergency visit for 8AM the next morning that night so I knew I just had to make it to morning.
- soperj 7y ago
  As someone who's broke their jaw twice from pucks to the face, yours and Chara's had to be a hairline fracture. There's absolutely no way I could have played with a broken jaw. It was over 2 months of having my mouth wired shut ( liquid diet - lost 55 pounds) plus plate in my chin. It's still painful when I get a puck/stick to the cage over 15 years later.
  - selectodude 7y ago
    Chars had his jaw wired shut during the games after he broke it.
    - soperj 7y ago
      couldn't have been the same way as mine then, since you can't breath deeply at all with your mouth wired shut (i almost fainted while running after someone).

throwawayhhakdl 7y ago

Somehow the part that surprises me most is that it’s only cost you 10k, or perhaps that’s after the 90% coverage

estomagordo 7y ago

As a hockey fan who only kept playing until the junior years, I don't think I'll ever understand why anyone would play without the cage. Wouldn't you adjust to the vision distraction really quickly?

Doxin 7y ago
One thing I notice when googling for hockey cages is that a lot of them incorporate horizontal elements. That doesn't seem like good design to me. Your eyes are spaced horizontally. This makes it pretty easy to ignore narrow vertical elements: if one eye gets blocked there's a good chance the other eye can still see around it. The same thing doesn't go for horizontal elements. If one eye is blocked the other is likely to be blocked too: you'd need to move your head to see in that blind spot. It'd make for a pretty neat research project, Make various sight obstructing hats with varying amounts and sizes of horizontal/vertical elements and see what its effects are on reaction speed, tracking a moving target, See if diagonal elements are better than horizontal ones etc etc. In any case I can imagine a cage like that being annoying, but (to me at least) that doesn't really weigh up to the risk of injury.
- OJFord 7y ago
  I started playing at university (UK) , and always wore a cage. Honestly, it's really only an issue when you first put it on each time, once you start skating you're really not aware of them. Like wearing glasses, I imagine. I used to play with a guy that had one of those half cages with visor top half, would be tempted to try that if I needed to replace mine, but not enough to get one before then.