Tooth implant update: stitches out
So a few weeks ago, I got a bone graft in eventual preparation for implanting a false tooth directly into my jaw.
I wasn't sure what to expect, so just about everything that happened seemed mildly alarming, but it seems to be going well so far. The major soreness and swelling in my gums went way down after a few days, but I still had to deal with the sutures.
As I said before, there's some kind of pig-collagen membrane inside my gums covering up the old tooth socket, and its filling of cadaver bone and newly generating Matt bone. Over that, the oral surgeon had stitched my gum tissue together with a messy-looking collection of sutures. There were two kinds: some thinner, straw-colored ones that I think were made to dissolve, and thicker, purple, more permanent ones, some of which were threaded directly through my gums from the inner to the outer side. Some of the latter had a sort of knot on the end to hold them in place that constantly scraped against my lip. Also, I think the tension on them was causing some persistent discomfort, though I wasn't in agony.
A week or so after the surgery, when I'd gotten off the antibiotics and the giant Motrins, I was feeling much better, but a major annoyance was that one loop of the purple sutures seemed kind of loose, and was constantly sliding up onto the top of one of the adjoining teeth when I was eating. I think it was attached at one end to the dissolving stitches, which were in the process of falling out. When they started falling out in earnest, that loop came entirely loose at that end and was flapping around freely, making me constantly fear that all my sutures were broken and they'd have to start all over again.
Also, when those stitches fell out, I had another bout of pain and swelling for a couple of days. I found myself taking regular doses of Advil to try to keep it under control. When it all passed, I was less alarmed.
On Wednesday I went back to get the purple sutures taken out. According to the surgeon's assistant who did the job, everything is in fact fine and my gum tissue seems to be healing up beautifully, which is reassuring. Pulling those out seems to have caused yet another bout of minor swelling, but the pain is gone, since the sutures aren't pulling or scraping any more.
Anyway, I've got a weird little scar now where I used to have a tooth. In mid-January, when the underlying bone is supposed to have regenerated enough (or generated, I guess, since there was never bone there in the first place), the landscape gets modified again when they put the post in, and then I think I'm going to have some sort of temporary metal cap there until my regular dentist feels ready to put the crown on. But everyone claims I've been through the worst part already.
I wasn't sure what to expect, so just about everything that happened seemed mildly alarming, but it seems to be going well so far. The major soreness and swelling in my gums went way down after a few days, but I still had to deal with the sutures.
As I said before, there's some kind of pig-collagen membrane inside my gums covering up the old tooth socket, and its filling of cadaver bone and newly generating Matt bone. Over that, the oral surgeon had stitched my gum tissue together with a messy-looking collection of sutures. There were two kinds: some thinner, straw-colored ones that I think were made to dissolve, and thicker, purple, more permanent ones, some of which were threaded directly through my gums from the inner to the outer side. Some of the latter had a sort of knot on the end to hold them in place that constantly scraped against my lip. Also, I think the tension on them was causing some persistent discomfort, though I wasn't in agony.
A week or so after the surgery, when I'd gotten off the antibiotics and the giant Motrins, I was feeling much better, but a major annoyance was that one loop of the purple sutures seemed kind of loose, and was constantly sliding up onto the top of one of the adjoining teeth when I was eating. I think it was attached at one end to the dissolving stitches, which were in the process of falling out. When they started falling out in earnest, that loop came entirely loose at that end and was flapping around freely, making me constantly fear that all my sutures were broken and they'd have to start all over again.
Also, when those stitches fell out, I had another bout of pain and swelling for a couple of days. I found myself taking regular doses of Advil to try to keep it under control. When it all passed, I was less alarmed.
On Wednesday I went back to get the purple sutures taken out. According to the surgeon's assistant who did the job, everything is in fact fine and my gum tissue seems to be healing up beautifully, which is reassuring. Pulling those out seems to have caused yet another bout of minor swelling, but the pain is gone, since the sutures aren't pulling or scraping any more.
Anyway, I've got a weird little scar now where I used to have a tooth. In mid-January, when the underlying bone is supposed to have regenerated enough (or generated, I guess, since there was never bone there in the first place), the landscape gets modified again when they put the post in, and then I think I'm going to have some sort of temporary metal cap there until my regular dentist feels ready to put the crown on. But everyone claims I've been through the worst part already.