This was a congenital condition as described in this article.
I was fortunate enough to have access to implants, which I did not appreciate at the age of 13 and 14.
The procedure was invasive. It required drilling out my baby teeth, (which did not fall out), and introducing a single peg which was fused into my lower jaw bone.
There was a long time while my gum had to heal over this area which included stitches at first.
I was given something called a flipper, which is like a retainer with two fake teeth on it. I wore this for what felt like an eternity.
I recall one of the hardest parts about this was that I had become interested in girls and that I wanted to kiss my friend and this flipper was in the way of this.
I was lucky that my friend Erin was accommodating and did not make me feel weird about both having to take out this dentures thing and that I was missing teeth while we made out.
We are still friends so it must not have been too weird.
Eventually, a mono tooth was made, (it’s probably not called this but that sounds fun) which screwed into the peg and had two “adult” sized teeth on the top.
Over 25 year later, the teeth look real.
The color was a good guess and unless you know to stare and look you do not notice them.
I have yet to have a person identify them and I’ve had to tell partners, as they did not notice even after being close with me.
I also do not notice them and have not had any real problems with them.
That said, it would have been great to not have gone through all of that as an early teenager, though I came out just fine.
Also, I can only imagine the fees that must have been associated with all of the work.
I wonder if I could grow the teeth back now or if the fused peg has ruined the chances.