I met Olga roughly 1.5 years ago while looking for a team to work on restoring my smile. Olga works with her partner, Dr. Sandra Madlovan who is a periodontist and Olga specializes in prosthodontics. Without goingn into my full health history, I have a long and complicated health history and have survived Stage 4 Burkitt’s Lymphoma 3 separate times in my life which requires very strong chemotherapy to beat. I was blessed enough to survive the disease and also blessed to meet Olga and her team. In short, whether you need implant surgery, crowns or any type of prosthodontist or periodontist work done, you will never meet two women who will work as hard and have more professionalism and caring than these two women. They’ve completely taken away any fear I have of going to the dentist and I am in the midst of getting my smile resored.
I had worked with my general dentist who wasn’t qualified to work with the condition that my teeth had reached. After receiving such harsh chemo drugs like bleomycin in particular, one of the harsh side effects is a disease called Xerostomia which completely dries out your mouth completely drying up any and all saliva. My general dentist had me spend quite a large amount of money on doing root canals on all of my teeth only to find that because of the dryness in my mouth, the teeth just collapsed and left me in an even worse situation than before.
I had all but given up by the time I found Dr. Olga Malkin. I was had a total of roughly 8 temporary (plastic) teeth total and for anyone who knows me, I have a very large personality and am always smiing. Unfortunately, I had learned how to cover my smile with my hands and many other tricks because of my insecurity of everyone being able to see all of my missing teeth. Olga made me feel instantly comfortable. She explained to me what “xerostomia” was and why I had such a hard time finding someone to work on my mouth.
I decided to go onto a crowdfunding page and through the kindness of my family and friends hearts, I was able to have the first and largest part of my surgery to a new mouth on Friday, June 5, 2015. I wasn’t a candidate for dentures because my mouth is still so dry that the glue would not hold for more than an hour or two and ultimately wind up breaking the acrylic teeth. I went up and down the east coast to every non-profit and dental school looking for a team that would be willing to work with me to help absorb some of the cost as you can imagine this isn’t cheap, but it is life changing. A large part of your immune system lives throughout your mouth and stomache and I had finally met a team which I knew after tons of research and questions was without any questions the right group to move forward with.
My surgery is broken down into two surgeries. Part 1 started at 7:30am on Monday, June 5 and I was scheduled to receive 9-10 hours of dental surgery. It consisted of removing all of my crumbling temporary acrylic teeth that were left and the 1-2 teeth that were hanging on by a thread. I was so nervous and did not sleep the night before. I was going in to have my entire mouth restored which is not a small task. However, everyone was completely professional, took the time to answer the same questions I had probably asked about 20 times at this point out of being nervous and assured me that I was going to be surprised at how quickly all would heal. They were 100% correct.
I had 9 4-5″ length Nobel Biocare implants screwed into my upper jawbone and another 6 implants screwed into my my bottom jawline. I already had 5 implants in my bottom jawbone however, so she was able to salvage those implants. The entire surgery felt like it maybe took 15-20 minutes, the type of anethesia they use is called “twilight” and they work with an amazing anesthesiologist who specializes in dental surgeries by the name of Dr. Phong Ta.
By the end of the the day, I remember waking up very groggy with Dr. Ta in the room and my mouth was completely numb. Everyone came in immediately when they heard I had come out of anesthesia to make sure I was ok and the level of profesionallism and follow up has continued with follow up calls all weekend to make sure I wasn’t in too much pain and to make sure everything was healing properly.
When it comes to professionalism, bedside manner and overall quality of genuinely caring about what they do, I could not not write a higher review. They even asked their very talented PR person to help me raise community awareness for my crowdfunding/fundraising efforts who made everything so much easier.
Today, I had the sutures removed on my bottom teeth and I will now wait approximately 4-5 months depending on how long it takes for the gums to heal. At that time, we will finish Part 2 of my surgery which will be placing all of the permanent implants. Thank you so much to these amazing women for giving me back my smile.