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JORDAN PYSZ / iFoundMyDoctor.com
Ron, right, has been a patient at Wickham Dental for many years. He’s so pleased with the care he’s received from Dr. Kumar, left,
that he’s recommended the doctor to other family members as well.
As holiday traditions go, few measure up to the Nights of Lights in St. Augustine, where every business in the historic downtown district has been lighting up their buildings from November to January for 30 years.
It has twice been lauded by National Geographic as one of the 10 most dazzling holiday light displays in the world, and Ron Ross is among those who make an annual trek to see it.
“My wife and I started making that trip when our grandson was 10 or 11 years old, and he’s 33 now,” Ron confirms. “It’s quite a sight to see, very interesting, especially if you see it from the water on a cruise boat.”
Ron and his wife don’t do much cruising these days, but they do travel a lot. Two- and three-day visits to towns where they can do a bit of sightseeing, have a nice dinner, and see a good show or concert are their preference.
“We also spend a lot of time at SeaWorld between February and May,” Ron adds. “They have two concerts every weekend there, so we go there almost every weekend during those months to see the concerts. We really enjoy that.”
Ron, 73, has developed a greater appreciation for those performances since beating cancer a few years ago. Ron’s victory came at a cost, however, as his treatment resulted in the loss of several teeth.
“A lump on my neck turned out to be squamous cell carcinoma, and to treat that I was given chemoradiation, which is a combination of chemotherapy and radiation,” Ron says. “But before I could start that, I had to go to the dentist to get my teeth checked.
“The doctors weren’t sure all my teeth would make it through radiation, so I went to the dentist and had five teeth pulled before I even started those treatments. That was in 2016, and the dentist who pulled my teeth is Dr. Kumar at Wickham Dental Care.”
A Permanent Fix
Sadesh Kumar, DMD, BDS, MFDS, DICOI, describes Wickham Dental Care as a “family practice where we mostly cater to full-mouth rehabilitations and specialize in difficult cases.”
Those difficult cases include restoring smiles ravaged by cancer treatments, but Ron was a patient there long before his cancer diagnosis. Unfortunately, the dental care he needed to rectify the resulting damage did not end with the five extractions.
Several months later — after undergoing 12 weeks of chemoradiation and being declared cancer-free — Ron learned from Dr. Kumar that the treatments that saved his life were destroying his teeth.
“It seemed like anytime I bit into something hard, a little chip would come out of a tooth,” Ron remembers. “When I went to see Dr. Kumar about it, he said, Unfortunately, this is not going to get any better, and he recommended that I be fit with dental implants.”
Dental implants are screw-like posts made of a titanium alloy that are placed in the jawbone, where they eventually fuse with the bone. Once the fusion process is completed, the implant supports an abutment and replacement teeth.
The replacement teeth can be a crown that is cemented or screwed onto the abutment, a partial bridge that can be affixed to one or more implants, or a full implant-supported fixed bridge that is secured by a series of implants.
Prior to seating implants, the dentist must ensure the patient has enough bone to support the implants. If the jawbone is lacking the required density, a bone-grafting procedure can be performed to further strengthen or grow bone.
Grafting is often required for patients who have been missing teeth for an extended period because bone mass naturally deteriorates after tooth loss and the lack of pressure on the jawbone from chewing fails to stimulate bone regeneration.
Ron, who wound up having 18 teeth pulled by Dr. Kumar, required grafts, but it was largely due to the cancer treatments negatively affecting the jawbone in much the same way that they were affecting his teeth.
In some cases, the grafting must be done before the implants can be seated. That wasn’t the case with Ron, however. Though he did require grafting, his jawbone was strong enough to support the immediate placement of implants.
It usually takes three to six months for bone to grow around the implants and make them secure in the jawbone. During that time, patients typically wear a temporary bridge that is later replaced with a permanent bridge.
Going the Extra Mile
After pulling the remainder of Ron’s teeth, Dr. Kumar performed the grafts and seated six implants in the upper arch and six implants in the lower arch during the same appointment. A couple of weeks later, Ron was fit with two temporary bridges.
“I had to stick to a soft-food diet for the two weeks while I waited for the temporary bridges to come in and again until I received the permanent bridges, but other than that, the temporaries weren’t a problem at all,” Ron says.
“The temporary bridges are very similar to the permanent bridges, and I am really pleased with the permanent bridges. They look great. I get compliments on my teeth all the time now, so I am very happy with the work Dr. Kumar did.”
Ron and his wife have been patients of Dr. Kumar for many years, and in the years since Ron was fit with his permanent bridges, other members of his family have become patients at Wickham Dental Care. Dr. Kumar is the reason, Ron explains.
“I’ve had very good dentists my whole life, but Dr. Kumar is the best, bar none,” Ron enthuses. “This is a man who truly cares about his patients, who wants all of his patients to be happy, and he goes the extra mile to make sure of that.
-Ron
“I remember when I was having my temporary top teeth made, he didn’t like something about the way they were fitting, so he took them out, added two more implants and it was only after that that he was pleased with the work he’d done.
“I was saying, It feels fine. But he was saying, No, it’s not right. He’s quite proud of the work he does, and he’s not satisfied with just being as good as he is. He’s always attending classes and trying to get better, so I can’t rave enough about him.”
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