The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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2:07pm on Thursday, 26th April, 2012:
Anecdote
Well, today I went to the dentist to have the abscess that had developed on the back of my tooth removed.
Oh, I guess I should say you ought not to read this if you're squeamish...
I managed to persuade the dental surgeon not to give me sedation, but to do it all under a local anaesthetic. I have serious reservations about sedation, as invokes half the reasons I don't drink alcohol. On the minus side, it meant I had to endure 9 local anaesthetic jabs, four of which were directly into my hard palette and therefore very painful. On the plus side, the dentist could give me a mirror half-way through so I could see what he was doing and why there was a problem with my implant (it's caused 5mm of bone loss, which will lead to gum recession and exposure of the implant's metal root). It also cost £130 less and I could drive home afterwards. I still had to have a small intravenous drip, because there's going to be a lot of swelling from this and the dentist wanted to give me some steroids to keep it down. so I didn't win on that.
The surgery involved peeling back my gum at the front and my palette at the back. The infection was cleaned up (which seemed to involve lots of scraping and drilling) then sterilised a little with Corsodyl. Some stuff was put in to promote bone growth, then the whole lot was stitched up. Time taken: 90 minutes.
The only real pain was the effect of the intravenous drip on my left hand and the injections into the roof of my mouth, although having a cloth soaked in Corsodyl on my bottom lip for two minutes wasn't pleasant. Novelties included the use of a mallet to knock something into my jaw and the drilling into my skull in the roof of my mouth (which my was rather loud to my hearing).
When the local anaesthetic wears off in an hour or so, I shall be in much more pain. However, the swelling it causes should go down so I shouldn't feel as if someone has pasted six sticks of chewing gum to the roof of my mouth. I'll have swelling all next week. The stitches come out in a fortnight.
Things are going to be grim for the next few days...
Referenced by Freed from their Bonds.
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Copyright © 2012 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).