North Texas woman plans to pursue legal action after DIY veneers went wrong
NORTH TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) - A North Texas woman's nightmare experience with snap on veneers is an example of what can be dangerous do-it-yourself dentistry.
Few cosmetic procedures can transform your look like a set of veneers to cover crooked or damaged teeth.
But they can cost up to $2,000 a tooth.
That's led to a rise in very cheap at home kits that a North Texas woman ended up paying a much higher price for in pain and suffering.
The material that they send you include pieces of pink plastic, fake teeth and gums along with her real teeth.
They are the remnants of the last two agonizing months that Desma Kayhani relives every time she sees them.
"All I can do is cry," Kayhani said. "This took away not only my smile but it took away my self esteem. I'm not the same person anymore."
Kayhani worked at a discount store in Kaufman County when she bought one of the many brands of do-it-yourself veneers on the racks for sale at only $29.
"My mom has dentures and a lot of my friends have dentures and I've always had a really cute smile, but it wasn't perfect. So I saw these on TV. And I thought, well, it looks so easy," Kayhani said.
But when Kayhani heated up the gel that would form a lifelike custom gum mouthpiece for the veneers, it turned into an adhesive that stuck to her real teeth.
"I thought oh Lord, now what am I going to do?" Kayhani said.
This is how she lived for four days until a dentist had to finally grind away some of her front teeth to get it off.
"They would not give me gas," Kayhani said. "They would not give me any kind of pain pills because they wanted me to be able to raise my hand and tell them if they were grinding into my own teeth, which unfortunately they did."
Sonya Reddy is a cosmetic dentist in Southlake who says do it yourself veneers can easily do harm to yourself.
"I highly recommend not doing these at all," Reddy said. "[It's] extremely unsafe, actually you forget that tooth actually has a nerve in there which is a pulp and you can damage that and get root canal problems and whatnot."
Kayhani said that she couldn't eat or drink anything because of all the cuts in her mouth. She endured not only a week of intense suffering, but also now faces thousands of dollars in medical bills to repair damage from a product that she believes is dangerous.
"When they got that thing off two and a half hours later, it had pulled out these 2 out and I was just like, you know, they need to be held accountable for this. You know, this is I don't want this to ever happen to anyone else," Kayhani said.
She made a TikTok video that's up to a half a million views and led to a handful of donations from people moved by her plight.
"I lost my job," Kayhani said. "I just wanted to have a perfect smile, that's what it's all about, and it went horribly wrong."
Kayhani has now been forced to get dentures which she hoped to avoid by purchasing the DIY veneers.
She's planning to pursue legal action against the overseas company that produced them.
