Lisa Price, 39, skipped social occasions and was very much ‘camera off’ during online work meetings as her condition left her unable to chew food – and scared to smile
A woman whose teeth started falling out ‘like dominos’ when she turned 23 says her condition contributed to the collapse of her marriage after she was left afraid to smile.
Lisa Price says she had always had fairly healthy teeth, but during her pregnancy with her third daughter her life suddenly changed. Her problems began subtly when one morning two of her front teeth no longer felt secure before before long, one tooth on the top right-hand side grew increasingly wobbly.
Panicked by the idea of her teeth falling out, she booked an emergency dentist appointment to get to the bottom of the problem. “I just noticed it one particular day, it was like it happened overnight,” says Lisa, now 39, from Leeds, Yorkshire. “So, I’d gone to the dentist just to say, ‘Oh my God, what’s happening?'”
Lisa was then diagnosed with advanced gum disease, which was likely worsened by the surge of pregnancy hormones. Because she was pregnant, treatment options were limited. There was little that could be done to save her teeth until after she had given birth, and she was barely halfway through her pregnancy.
Instead, she was advised to wait and have the loose teeth removed and replaced with a denture plate. “To say it was traumatic is an understatement,” says Lisa. Months later, just two weeks after giving birth, Lisa returned to have the teeth removed. But the appointment didn’t go as she had hoped.
“I got a completely different dentist, some lady that then took it upon herself to say, ‘Actually, no, what we’re going to do is take the four front teeth, because at least then when you smile, you’re not going to notice this difference’,” she says.
She was devastated but trusted the recommendation that she was given. “If somebody comes to you and says we need to take more teeth out but it’s going to look better, you kind of opt with what they suggest,” says Lisa.
Looking back now, she questions whether it was truly her only option. But at the time, urgency outweighed doubt. She wanted the problem fixed quickly and without ever having to face the world with missing teeth.
“So, it was a whip the teeth out in that day and put the denture plate in. Soul destroying is the best way I can describe it. Utterly soul destroying,” she says. “And when you’re in your early 20s as well, it makes it even worse.” Lisa was left with a partial denture plate, and as time went on, more of her teeth started to become loose and eventually fell out ‘like dominoes’.
“The gum disease had gotten worse, it started affecting other teeth and as well,” she says. “When you remove a singular tooth, you kind of damage that stability in that whole row.”
Lisa’s tooth loss affected her confidence, diet, relationships and front-facing career as a property consultant. Increasingly self-conscious, she would avoid smiling and often raise her hand to cover her mouth while speaking to clients and colleagues, trying to hide the gaps in her teeth.
In 2024, Lisa was due to attend a black-tie event at work and the thought of going to the event with missing teeth was unbearable. So, she made another emergency appointment with her dentist. “I am not going to any event where you can see that I’ve got missing teeth,” she says she told the dentist.
“Take the remaining three out and just build me a full plate and then I’ll have a nice smile.” Just two days before the event, Lisa had more teeth removed and a new denture plate was put in. She was told to keep it in for 24 hours to let it settle, but the pain she experienced was ‘next level’. “I don’t know whether they’d built it too high, but it literally sat under my nose,” she says.
“Every time I spoke, it rubbed on the skin in my mouth. It blistered all the gums across the roof of my mouth. It was agony.” After three days, Lisa removed the plate to relieve the pain and discovered that she couldn’t get it back in due to the swelling, leaving her with a large gap where her teeth should have been.
She was left unable to chew food and began blending chicken tikka curries just to eat, while losing a significant amount of weight and sinking into depression.
During this period, Lisa was avoiding work video calls, in person meetings and dodging social plans, even with her sister. Lisa’s relationship with her husband also broke down, which she believes was partly due to the severe confidence issues she had been struggling with for years.
“I ended up sat there one night absolutely beside myself,” she said. “You know, I’m in my late 30s with no teeth. It was horrible.”
As her confidence continued to plummet, Lisa decided to research how much it would cost to get her teeth replaced in Turkey. However, she quickly realised that the expense was going to be huge, with prices ranging from £6,000 to over £10,000.
After deciding that she would rather undergo treatment in the UK, Lisa found Evo Dental, a specialist dental clinic group focusing exclusively on full-mouth dental implants.
“I looked at Evo Dental, spent an hour reading everything on there, looked at their customer testimonies as well, the videos that they’d done, sent them an e-mail, went in, had the assessment done,” she says.
Evo offered Lisa several options, but the £17,000 cost was well above her budget. But instead of giving up, Lisa explained her situation to them “I am in this position where I’ve got nowhere to turn to. Like I can’t afford individual implants,” she says. “I don’t know what to do. And I literally was like, ‘Can you please help me?'” Three weeks later, Lisa went in for the surgery, which lasted for about four hours, and woke up with no top teeth, just pieces of metal. But after spending some time in the recovery, Lisa went back into the chair and within five minutes, she had a brand-new set of top teeth.
For the first time since her teeth started to become loose in 2011, Lisa had a full, secure set of teeth. Almost instantly, her confidence began to return, and she started to feel like her old self again.
After years spent hiding her mouth, avoiding photographs and dreading social situations, Lisa says being able to smile without fear has given her confidence, independence and sense of identity back.