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As bad as hours sitting in the dental chair can be, with your mouth being intruded upon by various hands, instruments, water mixed with noxious chemicals, bad tasting drugs and saliva, along with a tube trying to suck up bits of tongue, cheek, or anything else that comes near its hungry orifice roving around the area, and of course from time to time having your remaining teeth banged, your lips pinched, and needles magically appearing to stab and burn, it was none of that which made this procedure so truly unpleasant. It was the healing afterwards that really hurt. Not so much the pain, because they give you drugs to help with that, but the psychological attack upon your general feeling of being okay.
I couldn't eat what I normally would eat, and felt too woozy to return to my normal activities. I couldn't lift anything heavy and was terrified of sneezing. I was told that I couldn't drink coffee, and my gums were cut right along the chewing line, and up the sides into my cheeks. The stitches had long stringy ends that were poking my cheeks, and continually moving about, reminding me that they were there. The knots cut into my tongue in time and rubbed it raw.
Of course my tongue had to go and check it out each time my mind noticed something in my mouth; it just had to be a bit of food that needed to be finished, or perhaps a foreign bit of matter that had intruded into my mouth, making it critical that it be ejected before I swallowed it. My tongue didn't get much rest at first, and it began to hurt.
At the root of my discomfort, was the constant feeling of being different. I could not return to my daily routine. I was not so beaten up that I had to stay in bed, but I could not do anything much that was constructive either. And the antibiotics kept my stomach in upheaval almost continuously.
This, the day of the surgery, I was feeling a lot better when I left the office at around 4 PM than I had on the day I had my first implants done. I "rode shotgun" for Dotti as she drove us to the pharmacy to pick up my prescriptions, and I even walked around the store a bit with her, while we were waiting. At one point, when I was standing near an eyeglasses display, I noticed something felt funny about my stitches on the right side. I went to the mirror on the display, and I looked in my mouth.
It was an ugly sight. But that was to be expected after what I had just been through. But I saw that a couple of stitches were loose and one might have come out altogether. This could not be good. So, I called up the office and they said come back in. Oh boy!
I wasn't too upset about having to return to the dentist's office, but I was not very happy about having to get some additional shots so three new sutures could be put in. He said he had not wanted to pull the sutures too tight, because it might tear the soft gum tissue. On the other hand, it needed to be tighter than it was so they wouldn't fall out like that. He was after all learning to do this procedure, and I was his first attempt.
I could tell he felt a bit self-conscious because these stitches that had to be redone, were on the right side, and he was the one who had done these. But he didn't need to feel too badly, because, I was hardly out the door before we did yet another turn around with the car, with an untied stitch on the left side too. At least this one could be retied and no more anesthesia was required.
So, after two false starts, we made our final exit from the office for that long day.
Later, at home, I ate some Cream of Wheat, with a little peanut butter mixed in, accompanied by a McDonalds chocolate shake, taken with a spoon of course, because sucking on a straw would pull on the cut area, and perhaps cause damage that would be most unwelcome. Taking my food through a straw would actually have been a step up from where I was.
I had a fistful of pills that were going down my throat each day, and, as is my custom at such times, I had a chart on a 3 x 5 card laid out, with all the pills that I might take written across the top, and then I wrote down the time of day on the left for each occasion that I took any med, and then put the number of pills taken in the column for that med. That way I never forget when I have taken something or when I should (or could) take some more.
The fact is, these meds tend to make me so groggy I would never trust my memory alone to track this stuff: I was ingesting 2 different antibiotics, Ibuprofen and prescription pain meds, along with the required Sudafed for at least 3 days to keep my sinuses clear.
I found that with the meds I couldn't sit at the keyboard for long. I got up and worked a few minutes and soon I felt dizzy and ready for bed again. It was a vicious cycle, and as it turned out, was only going to get worse before it got better.
My sleep schedule was all on its head. I was up for a couple of hours and then I was back in bed. I felt terrible—I felt like I had been really hammered for the past two days, and I was surprised a bit by that, because on the day of the procedures, I was feeling a lot better than I was on the day that the 7 implants were placed. But by the 3rd day on that occasion, I was only aching. It was nothing too serious. I was feeling much worse this time at this point in the recovery. I was just biding my time, waiting for it all to be over.
Friday, I got up 3 times, starting at 2:20 AM, and twice I just went back to bed after sitting down at the computer for a few minutes.
My mind had not shut down at least, and when I did stay at the computer for a bit, this is what I produced:
To Fight or Switch: The Monte Hall Problem
Although the Implant Specialist who had come in from Salt Lake to do the left sinus lift and to instruct and oversee my dentist doing the right sinus lift, had suggested that maybe they could use the denture plate as a form of "Band Aid" over the work when it was completed, it was later decided to wait until later to put the dentures back in. So, that was supposed to happen on Tuesday as well. In the meantime, all food must remain soft. Yum, yum. 
I was ready to start eating real food again!
More good news for Tuesday: my first set of antibiotics would run out, with the second set ending on Wednesday. I was already long past the point of being ready for that to happen! I hope to then set into a more normal routine. I was looking forward to that in a really big way.
My view at this point was, that, if there were no further complications (an "if" that unfortunately turned into a false hope), all the really hard stuff was over! I had all 9 implants in place, and I only needed to wait for them to heal. It should take only an additional 3 months. In June or July, I could finally start to reap the harvest from what has been already sown.
I wrote to a friend that day, "My hope is that most people will never be forced to appreciate their teeth as much as I will. You just don't know what you have until you lose it."
I was wrong, I later found out, but at the time, on that Saturday, when spring was getting things in order so it could enter our land in a week or so, I thought that the most unpleasant dental activities that awaited me in the future were, shaping the gums, and setting the teeth in place. I hoped that I wouldn't have to face another recovery period like this one for a long, long time.
By the end of Sunday, I had found my stitches to be deteriorating. They had been giving me fits all along. Once my dentist got them snugged up, on my two return visits, the only problem was that they started slopping around in my mouth, and my tongue wouldn't leave them alone. I was feeling some pain when it would brush up against them. I hoped that once they were gone, I would start feeling normal again.
I comforted myself with the thought that if I were lucky, before a year had come and gone after I had my teeth extracted, I would have more teeth on the top than I have had in years, and I would also be pain free with all of those teeth. It was something to dream about, because I was in a lot of pain almost constantly before I had my teeth pulled. Having teeth, without the pain, would make all of this well worth it!
I called my dentist on Monday morning and he said to come in and he would have a look at the stitches. He decided that it was time to take them out even though it was a day early. He felt I was healing exceptionally fast.
So, a few minutes later I was stitch-free, and very happy about it! I hadn't brought my denture plate with me, because I wasn't expecting to need it. But my dentist felt that what was done to my gums and bone should not have altered the contours of my mouth, so my denture should go right in.
I headed out the door of the office feeling frisky and ready to go and enjoy my new status. I pulled out my cell phone as I got into the car, and I called up the prettiest girl I know and asked her if she would be willing to take a walk with me to Red Robin and have lunch. Dotti said yes! So, when I got home I rushed back to the bathroom and grabbed my dentures and tried to put them in. No way! Not even close!
My dentist had been right about the contours of my mouth on the side that he had worked on, but on the other side, the "expert" dentist had packed in more material or something and my gum protruded out way too far. I found that odd, since he had been the one who was talking about perhaps using the dentures as a "Band Aid" after the procedure was completed. He knew I needed to put them back in until the implants all set up.
So, there I was, left scratching my head. Here I had just committed to taking my lovely girl on a date and I couldn't use my teeth. Well, I couldn't let her down! So, off we went anyway.
Was I ever tired when we completed the 1.1 mile walk to Red Robin! Fortunately, I was carrying a large umbrella with me, just in case it rained, and I used it as a walking stick a few times. I was still quite weak from convalescing, and the walk was a bit more than I was really ready for at the time. But I made it.
Once there, I had to find something I could eat without teeth. I ordered a smoothie that Dotti recommended as being very good, and she was right! I also tried a side order of fries to see if I could soften them up enough to eat. I knew if they came cooked right they would be soft and not crunchy at all, and then I would have a chance. As it turned out, I was lucky and could eat most of the fries and all of the smoothie.
After walking home, I was very tired and I slept well that night!
I was finally able to get my dentures in, but it was not pretty what had to be done to them to work around the mess on the left side of my gum-line. A huge piece had to be cut out of the sidewall of the denture plate, and that meant there was no way I could get any sort of seal with the denture. For the entire time I had to wear that plate (and that was over 3 months) it rocked and cut into my gums anytime I tried to bite down on hard food. It was terrible, but it was all I had.
On the other hand, at least I could bite down a bit, and it was better than nothing.
When I left the dentist's office, my thought was, "Food! Real food! Yippee!" Still, I didn't go with anything too hard to chew; I settled for chili and fries at Red Robin. But they were good!
Now came the waiting. I had to live with dentures that were painful and so I left them out nearly all the time, and still tended to favor soft meals that I could eat without putting them in. I also had a few situations where the teeth were critical to photos. Dotti and I did a photo session at Sears with Jamie and Hunter, and an Alaska Cruise, and the teeth impacted both of them. The fact that the dentures were so uncomfortable to wear really changed nearly all of the photos that Dotti took of me during the cruise, because I just couldn't keep the teeth. Dotti didn't mind, but I am very unhappy with my appearance during that time.
Dotti went in to the dentist to get a couple of extractions. I sat in the waiting room with some books to study while I was waiting for her. When she came out, she was laughing and having a good time, which was good to see after such an intrusive procedure. Dotti always gets along with people well, and the office is filled with nice people.
One of my two sinus lift implants was giving me trouble—as it turns out, it was the only one that my dentist hadn't done himself. Both of the two final "sinus lift" implants, were done the same day, and they were completely covered by gum tissue, but the one on the left felt like it was about to erupt, like a baby's first tooth. I approached him as he was visiting with Dotti at the counter, almost as an afterthought.
I explained to him that it felt like I was "teething." He asked me to come back and sit in his chair and took a quick look at the implant location, and decided to cut the gum to "expose it," and then put one of the "healing caps" on it, like he put on all the other exposed implants a few days before.
It was pretty minor, in theory: one shot; a bit of cutting; and then unscrewing the old cap and screwing on the new one. It all went well up to the point where he was screwing down the new one. I was almost home free. But then, as he snugged it down, the implant gave a little. It shouldn't do that.
He said that it wasn't "fully integrated" yet. However, I had surmised that much already.
He took an x-ray and said it all looked pretty good and it maybe just needed more time. This was his first experience with "sinus lift" implants, and he wasn't sure. After all, it did not originally get screwed into bone all the way like the first 7 implants I got had. In fact this one only had 3 mm of bone holding it in place when it was first set.
So, I left the office thinking that this was not a horribly big deal right now, but it was disquieting. He said that getting my set of teeth now had been pushed out another month, and maybe by the end of June or early July I would be back to chomping again.
I was buried in some work when Dotti received a call from our dentist's office while she was out shopping. Our concerns had been about Dotti, since she had just had two extractions, but they weren't calling about that. Instead they asked Dotti to relay the message that they would like me to come in on Wednesday if possible, to see our dentist and the implant specialist who had put in the implant that had acted oddly on Monday.
I felt something crawling up my spine, as concern set in over what this might mean. I immediately called up the office so I could speak with the dentist myself. It seemed far too suspicious a coincidence that all at once the expert, who lives in Utah, would appear on a Wednesday to look at my implant, right after my visit on Monday, especially since I knew that he routinely flies over for Monday and Tuesday to work in the Portland/Vancouver area, and then flies back home for the rest of the week.
I was given every assurance that I was worrying unnecessarily, and it was nothing too serious; he just wanted to have a look at it. I felt better, but only just a bit, because I know that medical people like to put as happy a face on things as they can. (Oh no, that dark spot on the x-ray is probably nothing.) So, I was still fairly concerned.
Note: For this discussion, I am going to refer to the implant specialist, who came in from out of town to assist with the sinus lift procedure, as "the expert dentist," and to my local dentist as, "my dentist." I consider my own dentist to be an expert dentist as well, and far more than merely competent; he is excellent! But rather than calling them dentist A and dentist B, or some such, I will go with this naming scheme for now.
When I got in the chair, I was hoping that some happy news might be coming my way to settle the fears that had been percolating around inside my head ever since I got that call about this appointment. Perhaps it was normal for a sinus lift implant to slip at first, but then to tighten up later, as the bone continued to grow in around it.
The expert dentist took his position on the right of my chair, and he started pushing and testing the implant in question with those shiny silver tools dentists are so fond of: No pain, that seemed promising. Then, all at once, I felt a very strange thing happening with the implant. I thought that perhaps he was backing the new cap off the implant, just to have a look. He was definitely turning a screw there. Then I opened my eyes and right over my face, I saw that he had the entire implant in his hand.
"Is that the implant?" I stupidly blurted out? I didn't want to believe it. It couldn't be that it had failed! But it had failed. In fact, it was so unattached to the surrounding bone that it didn't even hurt coming out. It was like backing a wood screw out of an old rotten board.
I found visions running through my mind of going through that whole sinus lift process again; NO! My heart fell into my stomach. Depression hit me like a sack of concrete falling from a 10 story building. After all I had been through, this just couldn't be happening.
As it turned out, I was right to feel this way. It was worse than I had feared in fact. But I wasn't allowed to continue upon that grim path for long, because the expert dentist began his explanation of how it really wasn't as bad as I had feared.
He said that my denture had probably been banging against this implant. (I wonder why that was? Duh!) As a result, the implant was caused to move slightly over and over again. That "micro-movement" had caused the bone to create a soft encapsulating sheath around the implant, isolating it from the bone, instead of giving it the solid integration with the bone it requires.
While this was obviously bad news, he continued to explain, all was not dark and grim. He said that the sinus lift had worked well and there was bone forming up as it should in the area they had opened up for that purpose. He claimed that the implant had failed but the lift itself had worked. (Looking back, I am very interested in what he was basing this claim upon. The sinus lift had indeed failed, as we later learned, it was not just this implant that didn't work.)
I knew that they originally were not sure if they could place these implants right away or not anyway. If the bone had been thinner at the bottom of my jaw bone, they would have had to wait a couple of months before placing the implant. (Again, if it had actually worked that way, it would have still been a hundred times better than what actually transpired.)
At the time it was considered to be a bonus that he could place that implant on the day of the sinus lift procedure.
So, I was a willing participant in buying into the hope he was selling. I now had a little light at the end of the tunnel, and I believed that it was not 3 of them mounted on the front of a train plowing forward along the tracks towards me.
Next he really surprised me by saying that they could place a new implant in that location in 3 weeks. There I had it. It wasn't really a disaster, it was only a setback. And since the rest of the implants were all looking good, suddenly the mood had changed to optimism and assurance.
He then gave me another of their obligatory shots and set to cleaning out the area inside where the implant had been, inspecting the sinus lift from inside the hole, and he then plugged it up with something that would kill any bacteria inside and would keep things sealed up for healing. In just a few minutes, I was on my feet and, with the expert's blessing, off to have some coffee at Borders with Dotti.