Extraction #2

Well I had my other front tooth removed yesterday afternoon.  Not fun. The first one was still "fresh" in my memory even though it is 2.5 years ago (!), so was anticipating the whole procedure. It's just... really, really disturbing with him digging in there and me "hearing" and "feeling" it all... gives you the willies. It's especially "not fun" when he hits a spot that's not completely frozen and numb, or when you see him physically shaking because he's pushing around in there so hard. I had to ask him about 3 times through the whole thing to add some more freezing. It took him a lot longer to get this one completely out because of where it broke - Way up high above the gum line.  He said that the tooth root was fractured in half but there was a little piece that was attached to the bone in there.  Remembering the original injury, this makes sense. That was the tooth that never dropped down like the other one and was always much higher; because it was fused to the bone.  It took him nearly an hour to get everything out, cleaned and closed up. I was in the chair for about 1.5 hours in total. He did mention a few times that he was annoyed at it and it was hard to get out completely
He said that the reason for the fracture was "an infection through no fault of your own" that came in from the top of the dead root and essentially ate away at the bone material around the root.  He said the only thing holding the tooth in place was the material from the original root canal (from 25+ years ago?!), and that this was a major concern for placing an implant.  There's not enough bone material in there for it and that it's likely that we'll need to take donor bone from my lower jaw to place in there.  If you remember, he said that the last time, but didn't need it in the end. I'm hopeful for the same outcome, but honestly, the way he was talking it doesn't sound likely. He put in the fake bone marrow, just like the last time, in hopes that it takes and grows enough bone in there, but if this get infected again while healing, he'll have to open it up and clean it out again and there will be no other option than to do the bone graft from the lower jaw.  And that will suck!

I'm feeling not too bad. Last night I had some pain as the freezing wore off, but I'm alternating between Tylenol 3 for pain and Advil for swelling which has helped. He also has me on some more antibiotic 3 times a day to help keep infection away as well as an antibacterial mouth wash twice a day.  I tried to put the new denture in last night, but it's too tight because of the swelling and didn't want to mess with the stitches, and had a heck of a time getting it back out... so I'll probably wait 2 or 3 days before trying it again. I think it'll need some "fine tuning" because it seemed like my lower teeth were hitting it, but it's tough to say because it wasn't "in" as much as it should have been.
Anyway, this is going to be another LONG road to the end. Possibly and most likely over a year until it's done, longer if I have to have the bone graft...