First things first: Not THAT kind of Implant!!!!
If you saw my last post, you saw my ugly teeth after the surgery I had on Friday. i had a failing Dental Implant that had to be removed. The surgery went well, and I have a whole lot of Vicodin that I’m not going to take and some Amoxicillin that I will.
The original reason for having the implants is the car accident I was in when I was 16. I was rushing back to the coffee shop with some friends in the car, not paying very good attention, and missed the blind turn at the top of the hill. The car went flying spun in the air and landed facing the opposite direction on its side on some train tracks. (Luckily no train was en route.)
I, the driver of the vehicle and not wearing a seat belt, flew forward, smashed my face on the steering wheel, bounced up and star patterned the windshield and then somehow ended up in the backseat. Needless to say, I wear a seatbelt now. In the course of this flight, I lost 2 teeth. A third tooth had to be extracted later.
So instead of building a bridge across the missing teeth, my dentist said that implants were the best way to go. They cut open my gums, drilled into the bone, and implanted titanium studs. Those had to heal and grow in over the course of a few months, so I have dentures for a bit.
After healing the maxillofacial surgeon sliced open my gums again, and screwed in the posts that would hold the crown made of an alloy of Palladium, Platinum, Gold, and Titanium. This means that elementally, those teeth are worth more than the rest of my entire body combined.
Anyway, now it’s 15 years later and the x-rays show one of the posts failing. This could be for many reasons, the most likely of which was either smoking or my tongue ring banging into the back of the post. The implant failure caused the bone around the post to disintegrate leaving a gapping hole and reducing the jaw bone’s thickness and density. (Had I ever been in a fight, or been slapped hard, my jaw would have broken.)
So the new dentist (I’ve moved) suggested I have the implant removed. This procedure was a lot less painful and nowhere near as time consuming as the original. I showed up to the office, paid what my insurance wouldn’t, and sat down in the chair.
They injected enough novacaine to numb a horse, and then grabbed the scalpel. My gums were opened once again and a small rotary saw made quick work of the failed post. The failure was so complete that the post actually fell out of the hole in which it should have been attached. Had it still retained some support a grinder would have come out next.
After pulling out the post and removing some fleshy growths, the doc inserted some bone grafting material and sew me shut. I grabbed my receipt, thanked them as much as a numb face would allow, and got a ride home (thank you, Gail.)
I spent the rest of the day sleeping and watching shows on Hulu. I’m at the point now where the stitches itch, but my jaw as a whole feels better. The sensitive teeth I failed to mention earlier aren’t so much so now. The morning breath mucus I used to spit out is gone, and I can only assume my breath is better as well.
Overall I’m calling it a success and crossing my fingers that the other post doesn’t fail or start unscrewing. If it does, well, then I’ll actually have to get a bridge or dentures. A bridge I could live with, but I think I’m a little young for dentures (though I know some coworkers would disagree.)
