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mmcirvinA week ago, I went back in for the latest phase in my dental implant surgery. This had been originally scheduled for tomorrow, Jan. 17, but they gave me the option to pull it back about a week; I guess a hole opened up in their schedule, and maybe I'd seemed to be recovering well from my October bone graft when they took the sutures out in November.
I went in last Wednesday, and they took an X-ray, and, miracle of miracles, that old tooth socket in my jaw was all filled up with new solid bone like they'd said it would be, ready to have a new hole drilled in it. So they shot me up with local anesthetic again, and cut open my freshly healed gums, and the oral surgeon went in with a long succession of different drill bits to make a hole for the screw that will eventually support the implant. I'm not sure, but I think the hole they drilled in the bone might have actually had threads inside it somehow, because when he was done, the surgeon just hand-screwed the thing in like he was putting it into a threaded hole (unless I misinterpreted what was going on).
Now, this isn't even the last step I have with him. The titanium screw has a threaded hole inside it that the false tooth will eventually screw into. (In the X-ray that they took afterwards, it looks like something you'd buy at Home Depot.) But for now, that smaller socket just has a flat "cover screw" inserted into it, and he sewed up my gum tissue over the top of that. In March, when my jawbone has adequately fused with the screw, I go back there to get my gums opened up once again, and the cover screw replaced by a taller metal abutment that sticks out all the way to the surface. Then, after a final healing period, maybe sometime in April, my dentist will replace that with the actual fake tooth.
The surgeon said I'd have a shorter recovery this time, and it was true. The stitches this time were smaller in size and number, and all the dissolving kind. I was on amoxicillin again for another week, and was popping great big Motrin (ibuprofen) pills alternating with regular Tylenol (aka paracetamol/acetaminophen) for a day and a half and regular Advils after that. Instead of the Vicodin I never took last time, he prescribed Tylenol with codeine (you can't get this OTC in the US) for nighttime. The first night, when I was still hurting pretty badly, I decided to try taking one. I thought it'd make me drowsy, but it didn't, it just made me feel kind of ill and fuzzy-headed. It did make the pain go away, but I didn't sleep much anyway.
The exterior healing was actually quite rapid. Last weekend, though, I got the most painful canker sore of my life right next to the surgery site, maybe from the stitches scraping against my lip. Fortunately, it was gone in a couple of days. Just today, the amoxicillin ran out, and the last of the stitches fell out revealing what seemed to be almost completely healed gum tissue, so I'm feeling fine now. I'm thinking and hoping the surgery for the abutment is simpler still.
I went in last Wednesday, and they took an X-ray, and, miracle of miracles, that old tooth socket in my jaw was all filled up with new solid bone like they'd said it would be, ready to have a new hole drilled in it. So they shot me up with local anesthetic again, and cut open my freshly healed gums, and the oral surgeon went in with a long succession of different drill bits to make a hole for the screw that will eventually support the implant. I'm not sure, but I think the hole they drilled in the bone might have actually had threads inside it somehow, because when he was done, the surgeon just hand-screwed the thing in like he was putting it into a threaded hole (unless I misinterpreted what was going on).
Now, this isn't even the last step I have with him. The titanium screw has a threaded hole inside it that the false tooth will eventually screw into. (In the X-ray that they took afterwards, it looks like something you'd buy at Home Depot.) But for now, that smaller socket just has a flat "cover screw" inserted into it, and he sewed up my gum tissue over the top of that. In March, when my jawbone has adequately fused with the screw, I go back there to get my gums opened up once again, and the cover screw replaced by a taller metal abutment that sticks out all the way to the surface. Then, after a final healing period, maybe sometime in April, my dentist will replace that with the actual fake tooth.
The surgeon said I'd have a shorter recovery this time, and it was true. The stitches this time were smaller in size and number, and all the dissolving kind. I was on amoxicillin again for another week, and was popping great big Motrin (ibuprofen) pills alternating with regular Tylenol (aka paracetamol/acetaminophen) for a day and a half and regular Advils after that. Instead of the Vicodin I never took last time, he prescribed Tylenol with codeine (you can't get this OTC in the US) for nighttime. The first night, when I was still hurting pretty badly, I decided to try taking one. I thought it'd make me drowsy, but it didn't, it just made me feel kind of ill and fuzzy-headed. It did make the pain go away, but I didn't sleep much anyway.
The exterior healing was actually quite rapid. Last weekend, though, I got the most painful canker sore of my life right next to the surgery site, maybe from the stitches scraping against my lip. Fortunately, it was gone in a couple of days. Just today, the amoxicillin ran out, and the last of the stitches fell out revealing what seemed to be almost completely healed gum tissue, so I'm feeling fine now. I'm thinking and hoping the surgery for the abutment is simpler still.