Shelly Mitchell can grin or laugh without covering her mouth. The Coeur d’Alene resident can smile broadly knowing her teeth look magnificent — a radical change from less than a year ago.

 

“It brings me such happiness to be able to smile in all God’s glory,” said Mitchell. “I never imagined my missing teeth would be replaced. I am so grateful to Kootenai Family Dental for what they have given me. It is truly unbelievable.”

 

Without dental insurance and no means of paying out of pocket costs, Mitchell was resigned to going through life ashamed of her smile. However, she feels something miraculous happened when Kootenai Family Dental selected her to receive thousands of dollars of free dental care.

 

“I had just come home from church and I had listened to a sermon about hope when I read the paper and saw an article about their smile program,” Mitchell said. “I was inspired because I felt my teeth were hopeless.”

 

Kootenai Family Dental offers the Smile Program as a way of giving back to the community by offering dental work to a person in need, said Dr. Alexis LaRose, owner of Kootenai Family Dental.

 

“More often than not, our team doesn’t get to see the results of giving back,” said LaRose. “We are regularly involved in charity events, actively sponsoring Christian education in Coeur d’Alene, as well as donating our time and resources to other worthy causes. It is a completely different experience for our team when they are able to work one on one with someone who has a need and watch the change that occurs in that individual.”

 

Mitchell, 48, was surprised and delighted when she was selected.

 

“I wrote Kootenai Family Dental a letter thanking them for providing hope to someone they didn’t know. I told them they were going to change somebody’s life — even if I didn’t win. I felt they were doing an incredible thing.”

 

Then Kootenai Family Dental started her smile reconstruction. A Quality Dental Lab in Post Falls also donated the restorative pieces for Mitchell’s mouth.

 

Mitchell’s dental work, which took about six months, included putting crowns on all of her remaining upper teeth, root canal therapy, two bridges to replace some of her missing teeth, extensive fillings and whitening on her remaining teeth, said LaRose.

 

“The hardest part of Shelly’s smile was that she had lost so many teeth and the remaining structure was so poor that her bite had drastically closed,” LaRose said.  “To illustrate that, when this happens to someone, their nose starts to get closer and closer to their chin. So re-constructing her bite and opening her back up to where she had been was very challenging. The goal is to get someone back to their ideal self. We want her to look into the mirror and see herself and not someone she doesn’t recognize and as always, helping her to smile more.”

 

Mitchell also has multiple sclerosis, making treating her dental issues more challenging. Her options seemed limited. She was terrified of having her remaining 20 teeth pulled in order for her to have dentures. Bridges and implants seemed like a pipe dream.

 

“I had other dentists who couldn’t treat me because of my MS,” she said. “They said the swelling would prevent me from getting dentures to fit my mouth.”

 

Mitchell said the experience of getting her teeth fixed was wonderful.

 

“They treated me so well,” she said. “I used to be terrified of getting a cleaning because it would always hurt so bad. This was different. Incredible actually. I felt great and there was no pain. They did an incredible job on my mouth. My girlfriends have noticed. I have the movie star smile now. They can’t believe it, and neither can I.”

“When we presented this idea as something we wanted to do, our entire team was thrilled and happy to volunteer their time and expertise,” said LaRose. “We view this as our true purpose, to serve our community as best as we can.”