Here it is the night before my teeth get pulled and I’m
trying not to think about it. Yeah, that’s like someone telling you not to
think about the elephant in the room. Gee thanks, now that’s all I can think about.
They‘re gonna pull 15 teeth !! 3 Wisdoms !!
Holy Mother of Terror !! Somebody better have keys to the pharmacy.
D-Day
I couldn't sleep much last night and was expecting to sleep on the way over. This was not to be. Checked in at the front desk. The people at the front are always very polite and courteous. Not so much in the back. I think they may be payed by the procedure. I know one dental technician said that she was. I don't know about the Drs. My appointment was for 8:00 and I was 15 minutes early. At 10 after they called me to the back and put me in a chair, or as I was soon to know it, the torture seat. The Dr. came in and said he was going to shoot me up. I assumed ( and we all know what happens when you do that ) that this would be the worst part. He explained where all of the nerves were and where he was going to be shooting me. Had I known then what I know now I might have asked for just one shot- a 22 to the left ear. About 15 shots throughout the area including 4 in the roof of my mouth. OMG !!! I thought he was going for the brain. It was clear to me now that the Angel of Mercy was quite busy with someone else or was on break or something. He came back in about 7 minutes later and started poking around and asked if I could feel anything sharp. On one I could and he shot me once more. He then said he was going to get a little aggressive.Well if that was a little I don't even want to be in the area when he gets really aggressive. The tech would hold my jaw and suction as needed. He would grab a tooth with some instrument and start working it side to side. Then I would hear it crack and he would throw it in a tray and go for the next one. The cracking was both teeth and bone. When he finished with an area he would grab a small file and file the spurs off of the bone. Then he would sew the gum up around the war zone in my mouth. Long before it was over I had tears running down my face. And when it was finally over I looked at the clock. Almost an hour exactly since he started. I think he was either going for a record or for bragging rights for the day.
At least I thought it was over. The nurse asked if I wanted a wheelchair and I declined. We went back up to the front to check out. I told Teresa I was going to stand in the hall so the rest of the people wouldn't get scared by looking at me. She checked me out, but when she came out to the hall she said" Oh my God your bleeding." My mouth was still numb so I couldn't feel the blood running down my chin and onto the hallway. She quickly got me some Kleenex to catch the blood and told the woman at the desk what was going on. They got me into the back again and back into the torture seat. A different Dr. looked at it and said I needed more sutures. He started shooting me up again and AGAIN 4 in the roof of my mouth. Now not even waiting for the stuff to take effect he starts to oversew the previous stitching. All the time talking to me like I was an idiot. HEY DOC, I'm not the one who did this! Talk to your buddy in the next room. Then they tell me I must keep biting down on the gauze they have stuffed my mouth full of. Hmmm. Kind of tough to bite down when you can't feel anything.
When we left this time I didn't fight them about a wheelchair. I was #@!*!! miserable. They told us to change out the dressing about every 20 minutes or so. Let's see. An hour and a half drive back home with over an hour of it highway. Oh yeah honey just pull over on the shoulder here and we'll do that. We got over an hour of the trip done and stopped in a shopping center way away from everyone else. I opened the door and stepped away from the car, bent over and opened my mouth. An entire mouthful of saliva and blood came pouring out and seemed to just keep coming. I had refused to swallow any more of it than I absolutely had to to keep from having it run down my face. The salivary glands were doing their best to keep everything washed out. I finally got to a point where I said just repack it and Teresa did. We got back in the car and finished the trip. As son as we got to the house I made a beeline for the bathroom and repeated that whole process. After about another hour we changed it again and things seemed to be settling down. Somewhere around 10:00 PM I took out the gauze and left it out trying to see how much I was still bleeding. It wasn't much so I decided to leave it out. I slept sitting up in my chair till about 5:00 AM because I didn't want to take a chance on slobbering out blood on my pillow.
This is Thursday and I haven't had any solid food since Tuesday night. Today I have had liquid Advil through my PEG tube and a lot of water to keep from getting dehydrated. The pain level is actually fairly low, but the swelling is still pretty big. I can talk, but it helps to know what I should be saying.
Next appointment - March 5th Radiation Oncology
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