No Foolin'- No Flipper!!

Ok- Yes, I know... it's been a month since the last blog and you are probably wondering what is going on! Well, I had to reschedule the cleaning because of a work committment, so I didn't get in the first part of May afterall for that appointment. Instead we rescheduled to do everything today. What is everything you ask? Well, the way it was scheduled (yes a bit of foreshadowing in there for what is yet to come) they would do impresssions of the implant so they could send it off to the lab and get the final restoration made and then I would have my regular 6 month check up and cleaning. So here's what really happened....

My appt was at 8 am and I should have been done by 10 am with everything. They had me scheduled for an hour for each stage. It will not surprise any of you to find out that I was actually there until 11 am. :-) Here's why...

The Impressions- Mine and My Teeth
So I thought I was simply going in for a round of impressions where they would take the healing cap off the implant, stick something in the implant post to create the model for the abutment for the impressions and then be on my merry little way. Apparently I was under the wrong impression... Turns out today we were doing prep work for the veneer and all the other stuff I mentioned above. Well.... of course, the healing cap had some tissue that had grown over it, so we had to get out the laser again and trim away tissue. UGGGH. Two things that were not meant to come in contact are burning and flesh. I'll just leave it at that. Then, to prep the adjacent tooth for the veneer, we had to shave it down a little so the veneer will fit smoothly over it. To be honest, I wasn't quite ready for that since I was thinking we were just doing impressions today. BUT, I got over it pretty quickly and I'll tell you why in the next section. So anyway, Mazur went to try to use the parts that Gomes told Jenny to order for my specific implant, and guess what.... they didn't work. *Sigh* Yet again, no one should be surprised by that. :-) So we take a bit of a break to get the implant rep on the phone to make sure everything is right (or wrong). So... never fear- turns out that even though Gomes told them the wrong parts, Mazur had a spare set of the right stuff, so we were good to go! Woo hoo!

Getting Over It
So I am not quite sure when I finally realized that based on the agenda for my appointment, I would be leaving the office today without the flipper. That's right... no more flipper! But it's not a hole either! To get the adjacent tooth to look right once some of it was shaved off, we created a temporary crown to go over it and in addition to the crown, it has a fake tooth attached to it in the hole!!!! And it looks pretty presentable. (Does the word cantilever mean anything to anyone? ) They had created a mold of those teeth from the wax up as part of the prep for today, so they were able to fill the mold with resin and pop a temporary setting right on in there. Woo hoo!!!!! Hooray!!!

The Finale
So it turns out that even though I was technically an hour late for my cleaning appointment today, they were able to fit in after all this was done because of a lot of cancellations! YAY!

It will take the lab 2-3 weeks to get the final restoration done- they will have to create the abutment as well as create the crown to go over the abutment and then also to create the veneer to go over the crown and the tooth next to it. :-) But in a few weeks we should be ready to rock and roll!!! It's quite an odd feeling today without the flipper- not having a wad of acrylic in the roof of my mouth makes me almost panic at times thinking the flipper (and the tooth) is not in there. It's still a bit tender from the trimming and the shot to numb it too... so I won't be able to fully assess how it looks and feels for another day or 2. So as we are just a couple weeks away from the year anniversary of the first placement of the implant, I am hoping this will be wrapped up soon and I'll be back on my way to eating apples and corn on the cob and all kinds of good stuff like that!

So that's all there is for now.... hopefully I'll be able to keep you posted with the final posting of the freaky tooth blog before we all know it!

For now... keep smilin... i'll try to remember to take some pictures and post them soon too so you can all see how it temporary setting looks!