3. Dental surgery
I have a 虎牙. This 虎牙 displaced from its original position and grew on top of its neighbouring tooth. Without its disturbance, the baby tooth which is at 虎牙's original position did not fall out. About 4 years ago, part of this baby tooth broke off and left a lobang in my smile.
Who would not feel frightened about removing 8 teeth all at the same time? But I knew I had to get it over and done with asap. The dentist refused to let me do the surgery right away. He said by his SOP, such a large scale surgery requires the patient to think it over for at least a week before confirmation.
I started my surgery on time at 10am. It is the first time I was put on sedation and was in any kind of surgical procedure. Fortunately, there wasn't much time for me to think too much or scare myself further about it. One moment, the anaesthetist was talking to me, telling me that I was going to feel drowsy, my last thought was "oh no, I don't feel drowsy at all", the next moment I was awake after the surgery. My mouth was numbed, there was no pain, the only discomfort was not able to feel anything with my mouth. It took me some time to be able to start walking out of the room. My boyfriend was there to fetch me home. It was during the journey home that the numbness starts to subside and I could feel some pain in my mouth.
So till now, I'm still wearing the denture because it takes 3 months before the dentist can fix the crown onto my implant. The denture is starting to feel uncomfortable and I feel that there's always something in my mouth. Hope I can quickly get my crowns and throw away the denture.
In June 2011, I was finally posted back to Singapore. My days of spending overseas, i.e. Qatar, with limited health care including dental care was over. I have little excuse to ignore this issue and more urgency to get it done. My usual dentist does not have the facilities to do major surgery (hey, extracting healthy teeth are major surgery ok, they are happily embeded in my jaw). I decided to go to a dentist which I always pass by in Holland Village, GPA. I've read about it in the newspapers before, featured because they have some new technologies. I never really believed about the painless tooth extraction technology they claimed they have, but I like that lie.
I visited the dentist and received advice on what needs to be done. The recommendation is to remove my 虎牙 and its neighbouring 2 teeth. My 虎牙 has unfortunately affected the growth of these 2 teeth, causing them to grow in an awkward manner. As food gets trapped between them and caused decay, my previous dentist has happily done fillings for them. Once the 虎牙 is extracted, the fillings will be in public view. Considering the uneveness and appearance of these 2 teeth, the dentist recommended them to be extracted too.
In place of the 虎牙 and 2 unfortunate implicated tooths, I have to do 3 implants. A dental implant is a titanium "root" device used to support restorations that resemble a tooth or group of teeth to replace missing teeth.
In addition, the dentist recommended to remove my wisdom teeth. The overall plan is to do all the extractions and implants in a single surgery under sedation.
So after a week, I was back for the surgery. The dentist recommended additional procedures (to earn more money), including bone grafting and platelets rich plasma. As my the extraction of the wisdom tooth involves sawing off part of my jaw softbone to be able to reach the wisdom tooth, and eventually will leave a huge lobang after the wisdom tooth is taken out, the dentist will have to do bone grafting to close that gap. He told me that a packet of artificial bones is more than enough to fill the gaps, so he will do bone grafting to all my wounds until it is finished. What a thrifty dentist. Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is blood plasma that has been enriched with platelets. As a concentrated source of autologous platelets, PRP contains (and releases through degranulation) several different growth factors (cytokines) that stimulate healing of bone and soft tissue. This is done by extracting a tube of my blood to create my own PRP.
I started my surgery on time at 10am. It is the first time I was put on sedation and was in any kind of surgical procedure. Fortunately, there wasn't much time for me to think too much or scare myself further about it. One moment, the anaesthetist was talking to me, telling me that I was going to feel drowsy, my last thought was "oh no, I don't feel drowsy at all", the next moment I was awake after the surgery. My mouth was numbed, there was no pain, the only discomfort was not able to feel anything with my mouth. It took me some time to be able to start walking out of the room. My boyfriend was there to fetch me home. It was during the journey home that the numbness starts to subside and I could feel some pain in my mouth.
I reached home at about 1pm, popped a painkiller and went to sleep. When I woke up at about 5pm, there was not much pain anymore. I took my antibiotics, drank some milk and ate some porridge. There was still some traces of blood in my spit but considering there were 8 wounds in my mouth, it was surprisingly assuring.
For the next few days, I could only take in soft food and liquids. It was much much much less serious than I have expected. By the way, the dentist gave me a temporary denture to hide the front lobangs.
So till now, I'm still wearing the denture because it takes 3 months before the dentist can fix the crown onto my implant. The denture is starting to feel uncomfortable and I feel that there's always something in my mouth. Hope I can quickly get my crowns and throw away the denture.
posted by WSW at 8:29 PM
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