My Tooth Fell Out!!!

I usually have no sense of date, but there is one exact day from my military service that I still remember clearly. It was the 16th of March, 2025—the day my right incisor fell out. I mean, how do / of all people, manage to lose a tooth in the military? Was it from some harsh training? Did he roll off a steep cliff? Or… did he get into a fight with someone? A lot of thoughts might  cross your mind, but trust me, you will never guess what happened to me. 

I dropped a 200-pound barbell right on my mouth . 

Yes. My tooth fell out because it could not handle the weight of 200 pounds. I thought I racked the barbell onto the safety bar and  released my hand. And as you might expect, it was not properly fixed to the safety bar — the bar fell fast quickly with gravity doing its part. 

Right after I dropped it, I sat properly from lying down. I felt some water running down my chin and could not keep my head balanced. You know, like in Tom and Jerry, when Tom’s head gets hit by something and those star-shaped circles spin around the head? I literally saw stars spinning around mine. 

Inside my mouth, the blood was so filled that I kept swallowing, but as I did, a hard lump hit my throat, making me cough and spit the hard stuff. The time when I spitted out my incisor, the first thing I thought was that it was not my tooth because it seemed too big compared to other teeth. 

One of the officers who was working out nearby ran straight to me the moment I dropped the barbell. And the first thing he said was that I needed milk. I was stunned. Milk? In this situation? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Then, just as I tried to pick up my tooth, he yelled at me not to touch it with my dirty hands.

A moment later, he actually came back with a carton of milk and placed the top part of my tooth in it. The ambulance arrived quickly, and I was rushed to a hospital over an hour away.

Honestly, at that moment, I was already thinking about getting an implant. The tooth was out, and I couldn’t imagine what else could be done at that point. Everytime the ambulance went over the speed bump , the clattering sound inside the milk made me more anxious.

Before my train of thoughts got bigger, I arrived at the hospital, and I went to my doctor right away. The doctor looked at my tooth in the milk and said the emergency response was excellent, then immediately began the procedure.

Yep, that’s the x-ray photo of my tooth—back where it belongs. You can see the wire on my upper teeth.

The tooth was put back into place, and to keep it stable, the dentist attached a wire so it could be supported by the surrounding teeth. The next day, I visited another dental clinic to begin a root canal treatment on the reinserted tooth — a process that took about four weeks.

I was honestly shocked. I had no idea a tooth that had fallen out could actually be reattached. Now, two months have passed since “The Drop” , and the tooth is so firmly in place without wire that I can bite into anything with my front teeth again.

Once I began to recover, I found myself wondering how the reattachment process had even worked. In order to understand why my tooth came out the way it did, I first had to learn about the structure of a tooth. A tooth is largely composed of two main parts: the root and the crown. The root is the lower part of the tooth, embedded in the gums and jawbone, while the crown is the visible part above the gums that we use to chew food.(The root makes up more than half of a tooth, so it’s no wonder I was shocked when mine came out.)

The root is made up of three main components: the periodontal ligament (which surrounds and supports the root), nerve tissue inside the tooth, and supporting structures that stabilize and protect the nerve cells. Of the three, I figured out which one was the real MVP in my tooth accident: the periodontal ligament.

Interestingly, unlike the nerve tissue, the periodontal ligament can survive for a short time outside the body—if kept in the right conditions. I learned that this is exactly why you're advised to store a knocked-out tooth in milk: it has a pH and nutrient profile similar to the fluids in our mouths. In other words, as long as the environment mimics the body's internal conditions, some of the cells around the tooth can stay viable even outside the body. However, because the periodontal ligament is made up of very delicate cells, if you handle it roughly with dirty hands, the likelihood of it getting damaged is very high.

The periodontal ligament played another crucial role—it acted like a shock absorber, softening and dispersing the impact. That’s likely why one tooth came out, and in one piece.

I remembered the doctor firmly recommending a root canal treatment, and I later understood why: once a tooth is dislodged, the blood flow to the nerve is cut off, and the tissue begins to die fairly quickly. These dead cells can lead to infection, which is why prompt treatment is necessary.

Looking back, I feel incredibly fortunate. Had the angle of impact been even slightly different, my jaw could have been shattered—or worse, I might have ended up breathing through my mouth for the rest of my life. But because the force came down vertically—along the axis that teeth are structurally best at withstanding—the tooth stayed intact rather than breaking. If the impact had come from another direction, I might have ended up like Tom from Tom and Jerry, with all my teeth smashed out!