The Monday Snapshot – Hillbilly Edition

Well, 6 weeks ago I wrote about my front tooth that Harvey had injured with an insanely painful head-butt at church one day. We were giving it time to hopefully heal on its own, but a couple of weeks later he head-butted me AGAIN while we were at music in the park. I instantly burst into tears and knew the tooth was done for – it was just too painful when it was supposed to be healing. Sure enough, at my 1 month follow up, the oral surgeon (who was AWESOME) said that it wasn’t healing like she liked to see, and actually the gum line was inflamed and receding above it, so it was time to get it out. She wanted to do it the next day (July 17th) but they didn’t have a fake tooth made for me yet, so I postponed until that could be made instead of going 4 days over my anniversary weekend without a front tooth. 🙂

On my way to the oral surgeon’s office – you can see how inflamed the gum tissue is about that front tooth (#9)

My last hour with real front teeth…

I was pretty nervous leading up to the procedure this morning, mostly I think because I wasn’t sure what to expect. The whole thing went very quickly and smoothly though, which was great. I had elected to just do local Novocaine instead of being put under general anesthesia, mostly because I’m cheap. 🙂 This is already costing thousands of dollars, and it seemed silly to spend more on anesthesia, plus have my husband take a day off of work to drive me afterwards. It was honestly pretty crazy to be awake while they did everything – I kind of wish I could have seen what they were doing! I felt a lot of pressure when they removed the original tooth (complete with root), but nothing much after that. Just some vibrations and water as she worked on installing the new implant post. I used my Hypnobabies finger drop cue to help stay calm during the procedure. I love that program so much!

The new implant was literally screwed into my maxilla, and now it has to heal for 4 months before the final implant tooth is attached to it. Because my gums were thin and receding, she decided to let them grow closed over the post to hopefully have more gum tissue to work with when I go back in November. That means another minor surgery to open that up and dig out the post, but it will be worth it if it means a more natural (and matching!) gum line across the top of the final tooth.

In the meantime, I have a fake “flipper” tooth that is on a retainer. I can wear it in public, but I’m supposed to leave it out at home and at night to let that gum really heal. Redneck wife, here I come! Charlie kind of gagged when I told him that I’d be walking around without a front tooth for the next 4 months and said he needed to go puke in the woods. HA! Nice, supportive husband.

At any rate, I’m not in too much pain yet (thanks to a vicodin) and am hoping that this heals quickly and that the final tooth looks even better than this temp one. My upper lip was still pretty swollen when I took these pics, but I’m still impressed with how well the fake one blends in with my regular teeth. What a pain, but I’m glad to live in a time where this was a pretty simple surgery to fix!

Hahaha!

This was my crazy eyes pic I sent to Charlie 🙂

The tooth is purposefully kept off the gum to keep it from rubbing and let it heal better.

See? It doesn’t look half bad!