I waited three months from my tooth implant surgery for a followup consultation to determine if the implant was successful. How do they do that? I thought it would be through some sort of Xray. Ha, too easy!
The maxillofacial surgeon put a tool in my mouth and seemed to be ratcheting away at the implant. " You might hear a clicking," he said, Well, yes, I certainly felt it too but it wasn't painful. "That seems to be holding," he said. Thank goodness for that after all the wrenching, I thought. He then informed me that my gum had grown over the implant a bit and would need to be trimmed off. I would need local anaesthesia. Always painful, those ones through the roof of the mouth are particularly bad.
I reminded him about my defective heart valve. Well, I would have needed to be on antibiotics before my visit but now it was too late. How was I to know? Nothing for it but to do it intravenously. My heart sank. More pain and difficulties as my veins are finely engineered. He totally failed in his attempt to put a luer in my right arm. Better try the left one next. After some anxious moments he finally got that one. It took a fair bit of time to get the antibiotic in, in small increments.
The procedure was 'mostly' painless, no stitches and an Xray was taken. Time to take out the luer. The surgeon had his nose in his computer and the nurse had immediately walked out of the room. A bit more care was needed as I had to draw the surgeon's attention to the stream of blood running from my arm, down the chair and onto the floor. Surgeon called the nurse back to clean it up and apply a bit more pressure on the puncture site. I was discharged completely and sent home but my mouth was full of blood as I drove home and my jersey was stuck to my arm from leaking blood. Hmm.
As the hours ticked by the bleeding did not stop and my mouth was full of 'raw liver' clot. I was unable to eat or drink anything. All I could do was shove tissues in my mouth and distract myself by playing bass. Dislodging the tissues meant dislodging the clots. It wouldn't stop but I thought going to bed might be a good thing. Using an old pillow and a towel I tried to sleep but the 'liver," now very thick and fibrous, kept growing, along with the bleeding. I could no long talk so I wrote a cry for help on some paper and at 2.30am the next day I knocked on my neighbour's door. We contacted healthline who recommended going to A & E at the hospital.
A & E did not seem busy yet I had to wait in acute care for hours, bleeding. Nursing staff seemed intent on their computer screens. Not much else was happening. Eventually a doctor found me. He wanted blood tests done but insisted it must be done through an intravenous line. I'd had more than enough needles by this stage but I had to comply to check my blood was clotting OK. The nurse had trouble coaxing my terrified vein but we got there. Bloods were normal. A bizarre bruise appeared on my arm, some distance away from the IV. The doctor hadn't seen that reaction before so we ignored it.
The doctor then took a look in my mouth. "I think the bleeding is slowing down but I'm not touching that clot, too risky," he said. "This is specialist surgery and I don't know anything about it," he said. I needed to wait a few more hours for outpatients dental department to open so, complete with IV still in my arm and my box of tissues I had to walk myself down the road in the cold wind to the big orange building. Check in and wait for a space.
The dentist on roster did not want to do much with the clot either. "I think it has stopped now but I won't touch the clot except to tidy up around it so you can drink something as you'll be dehydrated after nearly 20 hours of no food or drink." Sucking through a straw proved to be a bad idea so I suggested I drink on the opposite side via cup. Never has a juice been so appreciated.
My neighbour kindly came and picked me up and drove me to the chemist where I filled a prescription for tranexamic acid in case bleeding took off again. I could eat only liquid food, such as melted ice-cream and cold tea for a couple of days and then gradually got back onto my usual diet by day 5. I let the surgeon's office know there had been a problem and looked forward to an appointment with a dentist to complete the implant process.
More on that later.
By Alexmit art - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99733632
Not the same as my gum tidyup episode.
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