I'm almost a week out of recovering from oral surgery. Last Tuesday, I had a tooth extracted, an implant placed and had bone grafting done around the implant.
My stitches came out today. Sometime next week, I'll go back to my surgeon for a 2-week visit.
Here are my post surgery thoughts, in no particular order.
--
First off, I decided today that people don't really understand dental pain or dental work, especially on someone my age (young-ish). To put my life in perspective, last Tuesday I walked away from that surgery with five different prescription medications, including two different painkillers.
Life pro tip: You don't have to explain pain to me.
I get it.
This is not an optional thing, ladies and gents. You do not get rid of a tooth for fun, because you feel like it, or because you get a kick out of it.
You get rid of a tooth for the same reason that people get rid of any body part, ever — appendixes, spleens, gall bladders — because if you don't, that problem will cause you pain and misery and eventually might try to kill you.
Me chucking that tooth was not optional. It had to come out.
In the words of my dentist, when she was explaining to me that it was up to me to make that initial appointment with the oral surgeon: "You have a ticking time bomb in your head."
I get the seriousness of this. You don't have to tell me twice.
Let's get rid of the bomb before it explodes.
--
When I was waking up from anesthesia last week, the assistants/nurses/whatever their titles are at that office asked me how I found the problem with that tooth.
That tooth had a root canal and a crown. If you looked at me when I smiled or laughed, you could not have diagnosed the problem. To the outside world, that tooth looked totally normal.
Also, according to doctors, teeth that have had a root canal are no longer alive. The nerve of the tooth is removed, and that tooth is dead. ("It doesn't have any feelings. It's dead. It shouldn't hurt.")
However, that tooth was broken in two different places. Broken as in not chipped, but completely broken horizontally in the roots and not fixable. It was time for it to go to that big tooth place in the sky.
My answer to how I found the problem: I had a headache.
In my post-anesthesia haze, I explained to the nurses that I noticed I was getting headaches a lot that easily went away with over the counter medicine. Only, when the meds wore off, the headache came back, and when it came back, the pain moved around in different parts of my head.
Sometimes, it felt like an earache, like I had an ear infection. Sometimes the pain was behind my eyes, and at other times, it was a very specific spot at the back of my head.
I know my body well enough to know that a headache that moves around my head is actually a toothache. I knew immediately what the pain was and made an appointment with a dentist the week that I had that realization.
The nurses seemed surprised by this. I remember them talking to me, saying something like: You did an incredible job of paying attention to your body and listening to it when it told you something was wrong. Good job on catching the problem.
Post-anesthesia Monica, who was slobbering all over herself and couldn't walk afterward and had to be wheelchaired to the vehicle, appreciated the validation.
Sometimes, when you're wobbly, bloody, numb mouthed and missing a tooth, validation and a 'good job' is all you need.
--
While I was still awake before surgery, they strapped my arms to the chair. They wrapped me in a blanket and explained to me that it was to prevent my arms from flailing around and hitting the surgeon.
Whatever, I thought. You can do whatever you want, as long as I'm out when this surgery happens.
That's a weird, feeling, though. It's weird to trust a stranger with your body.
I remember thinking to myself before they put me out: "Mr. Oral Surgeon, please make good decisions. Just make really good choices today, please and thank you."
--
To say that I have anxiety about this whole process is an understatement. I do not like this. I don't like the sounds, I don't like being helpless, I don't like having something wrong with my body that I cannot fix by myself.
I don't like trusting strangers. I don't like waiting. I don't like pain. I don't like crying and blood and needles and pain and shots.
The thing about specialists, I think, is that they're used to people like me. More than likely, people like me are normal to them.
When we checked in, I filled out some paperwork and they took me back immediately — my butt did not hit a chair in the waiting area.
Anxious people really don't like waiting. Specialists know that and don't make you do it.
I appreciated that. A lot.
--
I counted today and I had seven appointments in Wichita before this appointment. (Part of that was a crown I was getting on another tooth, but that still counts, in my opinion.)
I gave my blood, sweat and tears for this (to quote someone I did not get concert tickets for). I cried into my pillow at night. I cried while driving home from work. I cried in parking lots, behind closed doors, on the phone with my parents and to friends and to my dogs.
I will never handle this gracefully. I will lose it and cry every single time it happens to me.
Losing a piece of your body is devastating.
This is the fourth tooth that I've lost and the third implant that I'll have.
This is not new to me.
Right now, I'm proud of myself for finding the problem while it was inconvenient and I'm proud of myself for finding it before it turned into a total infected disaster.
A message to my body: Please just calm down and don't have another huge disaster for five years. I'm okay if this happens every five years. Five to seven, ideally. Until then, just chill out with the teeth breaking and the pain and the drama.
Please?
