I am able to report that now, three weeks after the operation that took out all my lower teeth, I'm able to both eat and speak well. I have no issue eating many things including chicken, fish, scrambled eggs, french toast, lasaga, pasta, potoato salad and many other similar dishes.

Basically, I can eat anything that I first cut up into small enough pieces. I'm not losing weight which has to be the critical test.

Speech I believe is best measured by the fact that I seldom get people asking me to repeat myself. Converstion proceeds normally with minimal issues.

This is a lot better than I had feared.