Best way to recover a swallowed crown ?

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ctyguy

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 14, 2008
Messages
1,004
Location
Columbus, Ohio
Eating some Mike-n-Ikes this afternoon when I suddenly realize a crowned molar is missing in my mouth ! Evidently I swallowed it :( So the most important question i have is that its small enough so that it should pass naturally correct ? Since its completely solid material its not going to break down in the digestive track. But if you eat nuts they sometimes don't breakdown either.

So I did a quick read on the Internet and the suggestions I read are as follows :

Find a sturdy bucket that can handle your body weight and use as commode
OR
Layout newspaper on the bathroom floor.
THEN
using plastic knives you have to cut it up and teeny chunks to try and find the crown.

I can't see myself going the newspaper route, my wife about dropped over dead in laughter when I told her about THAT suggestion.

Anyone have any experience with this type of dilemma ? My wife has already said to just get a new crown. But if its a couple of hundred bucks I think Im gonna at least try to recover the original.

Im still laughing over the thought of squatting over the newspaper. Any suggestions ?
 
Oh dear, the mental picture is troubling:eek: Rather than using knives can't you just, sort of, gently smoosh it & when you encounter something that doesn't smoosh, pick it out?:eek:

But, I agree - for the money... unless you're homeowner's insurance would cover it?:p
 
I almost had the same thing happen to me summer before last but caught it right before I swallowed it. When I told my dentist that if I had swallowed it, I was going to retrieve it he said he would have given me another crown for free before he would have put that one back in my mouth. I really don't think I could have retrieved it anyway. Good luck with whatever you do.

Kim
 
I swallowed a crown once when eating a brownie. I now have a new crown. The old one is long gone and I never knew a thing about its departure. ;)
 
ROTFLMAO- I work with a very frugal guy who this happened to. He went the bucket route. The denist triple sterilized the recovered crown for him before he glued it back in.
However this guy made the mistake of telling us the story. W had great fun with it. We made a "Frugal Tooth" award from some plastic dog poo and a toy tooth and an old trophy.
Avoiding the teasing from friends and family might be worth dollars for a new crown. Also, remember if you want your wife to kiss you without thinking of that tooth and where it has been . . .spend the money.

My 2 cents. . .
 
Whether or not the crown was gold would have a definate impact on whether I would go through all that sh** to recover it! Even if I did recover it, I probably wouldn't be ablet o stomach putting it back in my mouth... if it were gold I might try to cash it in... =) but when all else fails, the bucket would work.. actually, if you are lucky you can get one of those plastic inserts for the toilet bowl from your doctor or local pharmacy/hospital. At least you'd be sitting more comfortably while piling up your work...
 
I find this totally amusing,,,I am pretty sure I could not go through with the recovery.

Good Luck and lets us know how things work out!
 
Oh my gosh! I needed a good laugh for the day. I can just see you now rummaging around in your "poop." What a picture! ! :D I lost a front crown some time back, in fact, it was gone when I woke up one morning. I didn't even think about looking for it. I figured it was long gone, even down the toliet! Of course, front crowns are not as expensive as molars. I used to work for a dentist so he always gave me a good deal. I can see if it was a gold crown, it also would probably be easier to spot.
 
Man, oh Man, this is a good one....
It should pass in a day or two, so it's not like you have to play with your poo forever. I would want to know that the darn thing passes and is not still stuck in some corner of your digestive tract.
Anyway, you could use a regular toilet and slip a plastic garbage bag over the bowl, take your dump, and then lift off the bag and its contents to search through outdoors or in the garage. I wonder if a magnet would help.
Good LUck....report back to us.....we won't laugh......MUCH. ;) :)
 
Well, on a purely practical level, you might want to go to the dollar store and get a colander to put in that bucket, or under yourself, or whatever.

I have on occasion washed dog manure into the lawn with a hose. You might be successful with running water and a colander. I don't want to speculate or even spend any time considering exactly what that would entail...

Best of luck,
 
Good luck!!!

On the other hand, a funeral director once told me of a woman who died after having a tooth removed. Seems the tooth broke, she swallowed a piece, it went down the wrong way, she inhaled it & it started an infection in her lungs.

The funeral director handled the woman's service.

Truth is stranger than fiction sometimes.
 
Ok....Day 1 in the recovery attempt....no luck. I grabbed my Lowe's bucket this morning, took care of business and then to the task of trying to find my crown. Needless to say when I came downstairs with a bucket of sh*t my wife b-lined to another section of the house.

I considered using a colander but didn't have one readily available when the time came to take care of business. I didn't think that taking the Pampered Chef colander would have gone over very well.

I've already left a msg with the dentist and will be calling them first thing tomorrow am. I really do want to know if I've passed it or not so I will attempt this process again tomorrow. But at this point I don't think I can go through with putting it back in my mouth. Everything very well might taste like crap going forward and I don't want to risk it :)
 
I saw my 2-yr old (now 41!) pop the red bulb of a "Lite-Brite" in her mouth.
She, of course, lied and said she didn't, but I saw it. They were shaped similarly to a miniature Christmas tree bulb, pointy on both ends. It scared me, but for some reason I didn't call a doctor.

She was potty trained but still needed help on the grown-up toilet. Two days later, as she was sitting on the stool we heard a little splash. There it was in the water, all alone, clean as a whistle. You should be so lucky.
 
Just so you know......my husband has practiced dentistry for 27 years and he has NEVER had anyone who retrieved a crown from bodily waste. Of course, he has had a patient or two who WANTED to retrieve a crown in this manner to save money but no one has ever followed through!

YUCK!
 
Day 2 update...after listening to my wife howl in laughter at all the different names should could come up with for me I have changed my desire to attempt to be frugal. I think the Christmas expenses were getting to me a little bit :) Plus the fact that the actual recovery process was disturbing to say the least. But since DW has been so "supportive" of my efforts to save a few bucks I hadn't told her of my waivering and decided to have a little fun at her expense.

This AM I went back upstairs with the bucket (vigorously cleaned of course from yesterday), wife sitting at the kitchen table with coffee upon my exit. What my wife didn't notice was me going into the garage before she awoke and putting about 1 cup worth of peet moss in the bucket. Plus a handful of dirt from a bucket that was fairly clumpy. When I got upstairs I added enough water for it to mix a bit. It didn't look authentic enough so I added a 1/2 bottle of Calamine Lotion which absolutely did the trick. When I come downstairs my wife gives me that "really ??" look that Im actually doing this again. Day 1 was fun for her but Day 2 she is now a bit disturbed that Im still thinking about recovery. As I walk into the kitchen I stumble (intentionally) and drop the bucket. It falls on its side and a good portion of the contents of the bucket proceed to spill to the floor. We have an open kitchen with tile flooring so there was no collateral damage other than a little bit that splattered on the fridge.

You want to see a woman come unhinged ? Spill a bucket of pretend human sh*t on the kitchen floor. Of course the dogs come bouncing in to investigate the situation. They start sniffing the stuff and my lovely wife is completely freaking out. Unfortunately I couldn't hold the laughter in and had to "spill" the beans. I was then assaulted with a bran muffin and a few choice words :) I got to the task of cleaning up the floor and then cooked dear wife breakfast since the last of the muffins became a projectile. I made veggie omlets and all is well again. I suggested biscuits and sausage gravy but that only got me hit with a newspaper and another few choice words :)

See what happens when you take time off of work ???
 

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