Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back

One of my doctors terms my chronic bad dreams “night terrors.” I’ve told you all about them. Now let me describe my day terrors.

The periodontist called to get an update from me early this morning. When I told her I still can’t feel much of the left side my face, she decided to remove the second of the three implants, in case it is the culprit. She asked me to come in shortly and assured me it would be a quick procedure like yesterday’s, which was uncomfortable but didn’t require anesthesia. 

Ignorance truly is bliss. I innocently settled into the chair thinking I knew what awaited me. Ha ha ha ha ha. 

As before, she inserted some kind of ratcheting tool into the metal socket and gave it a good counterclockwise twist, resulting in a moment of blazing agony followed by a long burn of residual pain. I winced and bore it. She tried again. This time I squawked. “I’m sorry. I don’t usually complain but that really hurt a lot.” 

So she shot me full of numbing stuff and then tried a couple more torques, resulting in far and away the worst pain I’ve ever encountered in a dentist’s chair, and possibly in my life, including broken bones and unmedicated childbirth. 

More shots. Suddenly I was unable to close my left eye, my right eye started blinking uncontrollably, and my vision blurred. She wrestled with the hardware again. Between the severe pain and the nastiness of the side effects, I did something I’ve never done at a doctor’s office: I almost lost it, for just a second. I mopped my teary eyes with my pink dental bib, not sure I could go through with it. But onward.

The implant just wouldn’t come out. Not only had it gotten embedded in the bone, but the area beneath, by the nerve, was surely inflamed. The pressure and turning didn’t make it happy. Eventually the thing refused to unscrew further and just spun in place. Time to bring out the big guns: drilling and gum-slicing. 

I realized that there was nothing more to be done to ease the agony, so I squinched my eyes shut and taloned my hands with her every action. What I don’t understand is how my face and lips and eye could be so throughly numb, yet I could still feel the jaw torture as well as each stitch going in afterwards.

After it was finally over, once again I asked her if this nerve damage could be permanent, and once again she told me she hoped not.

I got up from the chair in a Very Deflated Mood and made my way to my car, having to close my left eye manually every few seconds. I noticed my left eyebrow was drooping, too. On the road I realized my sight was rather impaired so I was nervous as I crept along, mopping my eyes. Luckily it was a relatively short trip home on familiar side streets.

Now my eye closes on its own and I can see again, but I was freaked out for a while there. Now that the novocaine has pretty much worn off, I am significantly more numb and uncomfortable than before. Desperately hoping that gets better in a few hours.

I do believe this doctor is probably a very good one, despite these trials, but she does seem baffled by why it’s gone down like this.

The thought of the implants ahead after I’m healed is a not a good one.