But after a while, it stopped hurting. The worst part about the long wait was keeping the trench clean after meals. Crumbs and stuff sometimes managed to get in there, and the only way to keep it clean was to use a syringe Dentist Three gave me to blast warm water in there. It worked, but after EVERY meal? That shit just got tedious, especially at work. I’d retire to the bathroom after lunch so I could clean out the cleft in my gums. People would then ask me questions. Even back at my desk, people would see the syringe and ask me all about it. It was a pain, and my junkie jokes got old fast.
But finally, there came the day when I would get my implant. First, I had to get the CT scan, to make sure this thing was going to work out. Best part: I had to pay for the whole thing at that moment. Yeah, about $200 for the scan, in advance. You’re starting to get the idea of how much this is costing me, right?
I sat down, and the scan went around my head, or at least it tried to. My shoulders were too high, and it kept brushing up against them. I tried my best to keep my head straight, but they had to do it again. There was no way to adjust it, either.
When it was done, the technician said, “Do you have a cold?”
“No,” I said.
“You’re going to have one soon.”
Sure enough, the next day I was sniffling.
I should mention that the people who did the scan were not affiliated with any of the dentists I’d seen by that point. However, they were in the same building as Dentist Two, who is the person who needs to see the scan results. I scheduled this thing a couple of weeks in advance of the implant appointment, to make sure there was plenty of time.
Just to make sure everything was going to go smoothly, one week before the appointment, I called Dentist Two to make sure they had the results. Guess what: they didn’t, and when they called the scan company about the issue, they claimed to have sent it off. Yeah, it got lost in the mail.
The mail. They are not only in the same FUCKING building, the scan company is on the floor below Dentist Two, almost directly below. All it would have taken was for someone to walk it up.
Well, things worked out anyway. Dentist Two got the scan just in time, and she said she thought everything was going to go well. It was time to get ready and get shot up with Novocain.
This time, when they put the blood pressure cuff on me, I scored well below the threshold. They congratulated me on this, and they decided that before, I was just too stressed out by having a tooth pulled. There was no real problem here.
They injected me and went to work drilling me. I tried to watch TV, but having so many tools shoved in my mouth was kind of distracting. In the background, some radio station played Mellencamp’s “Hurts So Good.” How fitting.
At one point, Dentist Two had to fit an extremely long, thick drill into my mouth, so I had to open up as widely as I could. There was barely enough room to fit it in. If not for the missing tooth, it wouldn’t have made it.
Now, they numbed me as much as they could, and for the most part, the procedure was painless. However, keep in mind that they were drilling all the way down into my jawbone. Yep, I felt it a bit. Every once in a while, they had to reload me on the Novocain, but it never reached down far enough to be completely painless.
Finally, it was time to put the implant in. Actually, it looked kind of like a wood screw. They experimented with different sizes until they realized that it would go in a little bit low on me (because of the crown lengthening). But then, after looking at my x-rays again, they saw that I bite with my back teeth (so much so that my front teeth don’t come together), so this tooth was not going to come into consideration when it came to chewing.
Now that this was determined, they started screwing the implant into me. I felt it getting tighter and tighter until I heard a click in my head.
“Wow, did you hear that?” Dentist Two asked. I couldn’t speak because I had a giant screwdriver in my mouth, so she continued: “That’s good news. Honestly, I didn’t know for sure if this implant was going to take hold. You lost a lot of bone, so much that I wondered if you actually got the bone graft. But that click means that this is going to stay in place. This is going to work.”
Well, that was good news . . . wait a minute! This she wasn’t certain?!
I let it go. Things were going to work out, so why quibble?
She snapped a cap over the implant and told me to use some of the mouthwash stuff she’d prescribed for me before to keep the cap clean. She also gave me a miniature brush to use to this end. If I didn’t use this, then it would get discolored and nasty and food might slip in under it.
When I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw what looked like a metal knob in my mouth where the tooth had once been. It looked tiny, and I wondered how they’d get a crown on that thing.
She told me to come back in three months, at which point she’d put the abutment on. Then, I’d be free to get my crown. At long last.
I was presented with my bill and sent on my way.
Tune in next time for the stunning conclusion. And remember to brush twice a day, floss, and all that jazz. You don’t want this to happen to you.
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