Ever since I was a kid, going to the dentist has been one of my least-favorite things to do. Today, I learned that there is something even more frightening than going to the dentist: going to the oral surgeon.
My story begins many years ago, when I was in the sixth grade at Hannah Holbrook Elementary School. I was running up the slide on the "Big Toy" at recess - something only "cool" kids like me did - when one of my classmates slid down the slide toward me, knocking me off my feet and face forward onto the slide. As a result, I chipped one of my front teeth and also managed to get a lot of blood all over the slide and my shirt.
Whether or not my classmate slid into me on purpose is a debate that, in my mind, has never been properly settled.
At any rate, to make a long story short (too late!), I have had many problems with that tooth over the years. Here and there, it has chipped again. Six months ago, as I posted in November, the whole tooth came out and had to be reattached. Last week, the tooth came out again, and it came out a third time just this morning.
My dentist referred me to an oral surgeon for a permanent solution: getting the remainder of the tooth extracted and having my mouth prepped for an implant. I went to see the oral surgeon this afternoon, and to my surprise, he wanted to extract the remnant of the old tooth right then and there.
If you've ever had the misfortune of having to go through this, then you know that having a tooth extracted an and implant is a costly procedure. To help cut down on costs, I elected to have this first part done under local anesthetic - in other words, I would be numb but awake for the experience.
If you've not had the misfortune of having to go through this, I'll give you a nickel's worth of free advice: Choose being knocked out over the local anesthetic.
The procedure unfolded like this: I was first given a rather painful shot to numb the area where the oral surgeon would be working. Thinking it was fully numb - it wasn't - he began to yank on the tooth, and all the while, tears are pouring out of my eyes and I'm screaming from the bottom of my throat. Fortunately, he noticed this and gave me another numbing shot. For some reason - go figure - I began thinking of Steve Martin singing "Dentist!" in
Little Shop of Horrors, especially the line about "causing great pain."
Once I was fully numb, he extracted the tooth as blood spurted out of my mouth and onto the surgeon and his assistant. The next step was to insert small bone fragments - taken from either a cadaver or a cow (yes, really) - into the now-empty tooth cavity to clear a path for later inserting the implant. To do this, he used either a hammer or a chisel (again, really) - remember, I was under the influence of not one but two numbing shots - to pound it into my mouth, shaking my skull and head and basically making what was really about 90 seconds of hammering feel like a half-hour.
At any rate, I survived to tell the tale, and I have been at home resting since, replacing the gauze in my mouth every 20 minutes or so, because I keep bleeding from my wound. After this, I have to wait eight-to-twelve weeks for the bone fragments to heal in my mouth, and then I go back to have the implant inserted. To cover up the large gap in my smile, I am going in to my dentist tomorrow to be fitted with a retainer, or "flipper," with a temporary tooth, adding a whole new level of sexiness to me.
Some guys have all the luck!
