A Walk in the Park

So I went in for oral surgery #3 yesterday. YAY! I had seriously been waiting for it for months. I just wanted to go in and get it done and get this ball rolling.

Good News
Well the good news was that I had my drugs in hand, the stent in hand (yes, it came with me :) ) and was ready to go!!! The stent was way cool! It was kind of like an invisalign braces tray- clear plastic with clear tooth with a hole in it to tell him where to drill!

Modest Office
So we get to the office- and I do have to admit I was a bit afraid of what the inside would be like. The promise of "modest" arrangements did have my imagination in a bit of a spin. I am glad to report it was a full functioning dental office. :) By modest I believe he meant it was a bit smaller and not quite as done up as the previous office. (Some lovely 80's wallpaper plastered all over the office too. ) But no Craftsman tool box on the counter, so we were good to go!

In the room where they took me, there were a series of those kitchy Successories poster with Teamwork, Dedication, etc. on them. So when Dr. Gomes walked in, I asked him which of those 5 we were going for today. I suggested Perserverence, but he thought it might be more like Determination. :) We exchanged plesantries, I told him that Dr. Mazur was going to pay for my stent, we were good to go! Game on!

Go Time
So we get going... the stent is a nice stent he says. Problems that arise with the stent is that they don't let successively larger drill bits go through them though. Hmm. I guess it's more like a pilot hole? Well, so things are coming along nicely, or so I think. My appointment did start at 10:30. :) And it's about 11 now. That's when Dr. Gomes announces that he doesn't think we are going to be able to get an implant in there because there's no bone to implant into. Excuse me? So he frantically starts searching around the room for something- I believe a smaller implant or something with a narrow head on it. A dental assistant comes in and announces that there is another patient ready to see him now too. So he shoves some gauze in my mouth, keeps saying that he's not sure this is going to work, but he's going to go check on the other patient and will be back and we can figure this out.

A Little Chat with God
OK- so he leaves and the assistant Tiana, says, well, that doesn't sound like good news, does it? Genius. Pure Genius. I'm pretty sure that's not the kind of stuff you're supposed to say to a patient in that moment. :) So anyway, she leaves too. And so I decide to have a little chat with God that goes a little something like this- "you have got to be kidding me. :)" I'm sure that's what God likes to hear. ;-) So anyway, I say a little prayer for Dr. Gomes and then sit back to listen to the Muzak being piped in the room. It's a soft rock station out of Indy and they are playing some song about how it will all be worth the pain. :) HA! The irony wasn't lost on me. :) I am pretty sure my life is all about irony anyway. :)

Triumphant Return
Ok- Dr. Gomes comes back in and is still saying how he's not sure this is going to work. He then throws in a 'we should have just left that other implant in there and Mazur could have restored it.' Um, No. And it's not there now, so what are we going to do? So with my mouth packed full of gauze, I say, can't you just get it in there and then pack it in tight with some bone grafting all around it and stitch it up real good and hope it doesn't move? He explains that we need to find at least some bone for it to go into and then we can pack around it even if it's not connected to bone on a couple sides. So he takes on the challenge and decides to take a look and see what we have to deal with here. Still repeating about how we should have just left the other one in there, but when he talked to Chriiisss he just asked him what he wanted to do and he wanted to redo it, so we redo it. So miracles happen- he finds some bone! Yay!!! So it is slightly over from where the stent has him drilling, but should still be ok. And sure enough, when he goes to put the implant in, I can definitely feel it is going into bone!!! So he gets it in, packs bone grafting around it, stitches me up and asks for the flipper. He tries the flipper in there to make sure it's not going to press too much on the incision and says it looks good and I am done.

That's right, no mouth full of gauze to walk out of there with- flipper in- I'm talking pretty normally. So I am still a bit sore-I always forget how it does hurt to do things like wash my face and blow my nose though too. So it's a little tender still today. I have been resting quite a bit though too, but of the 3 operations, this one has left me feeling the best. I get occasional twinges of bone pain, but its not too bad. (Of course, the 800 mg Ibuprofen might have something to do with that? ) It's like when you have braces and they have tightened them really good one time and you have a bit of pain... that's about all though.

So we leave the stitches in for 3 weeks now- per my request to try to keep bone grafting in there. He thinks the implant is still close to the same place it was before, but it's not in at an angle so that should be good. I guess we will know in about 3 months. :)

So it's in. It was just like a walk in the park- or the equivalent for me in the dental world at least! :) I'll report back in a few weeks after the stitches come out and maybe have some better idea of where it really is. :) So, I'll keep you posted!