Now with added titanium!

[randomness]

Dentist: "Congratulations, you now have an implant."

Dentist: "I need to warn you about what's coming next. It's going to feel like I'm thumping your skull with a hammer."
Me: "Well, because you are."
Dentist "Um, pretty much, yeah."

It's a wacky experience having a mallet (which looks something like a ball-peen hammer with nylon faces) and a ratchet wrench used on your skull in fairly rapid succession. Not surprisingly, I'm a little woozy.

Comments

[donnad.livejournal.com]

Oh gee... thanks for the warning, I'm looking at a mouthful of implants sometime in the next three months. But mine will be done under complete sedation since the work will be so extensive.

[gingicat]

That does sound rather surreal.

Happy chomping?

[marginaleye.livejournal.com]

Jesus Haploid Christ.

Dentistry is my particular phobia. Just reading a description of that process makes me slightly sick to my stomach. Obviously, your mileage varies. Congratulations on having endured that -- you're far braver person than I.

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

Other Kenjari has a couple of implants, and he also found the experience sort of weird. Especially the ratchet wrench.

[krlisue.livejournal.com]

You were awake for your implant?! Oh, I would NEVER allow that to happen. I like it just fine when I get all sleepy first.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Well, they don't always use a mallet. As explained to me, sometimes, in order to preserve bone, they will hammer in a spike to create the space for the implant, rather than drill, because when they drill, they lose the bone which they drill away.

So if yours are not in a place where bone needs to be preserved, they may not do this. In my case it saved me from bone grafts.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Oops. I'm sorry, maybe I should have put that behind a cut.

For most procedures, the worst part for me is getting injected with novocaine. After that, it's all quite interesting in a somewhat academic way, particularly when they tell me what they're doing. So, no real bravery involved.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

That was so weird! I could hear the ratchet, and I could feel my head torquing sideways as he cranked away.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

It wasn't so bad, really. The worst part for me is always the novocaine injections. They hurt.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

That does sound rather surreal.

It was!

Happy chomping?

Thanks!

[donnad.livejournal.com]

I will need as much bone preserved as possible. I may actually need a bone graft afterall. They still aren't really sure, the panorex wasn't conclusive and I'll need a CT to determine if I have enough bone mass. If I need the graft, it'll be a year before mine are done, it would take 8 months to heal enough to mantain the implants.

[krlisue.livejournal.com]

Yeah, recovery from the bone graft sucks. Only time in my life I actually used more than one or 2 of the happy pills they gave me.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

You can has permanent tooth! Yay!

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

Oh, is that what the H. stands for? That's totally awesome.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

The novocaine is the worst part for me too-- why is that? I mean other than that in my case the last time a dentist gave me a shot of novocaine he thought there was a vasoconstriction reaction, but I suspect what happened was he hit the nerve trunk by accident. Either way now I can't hold still for novocaine, but _before_ that, why is it the hard part?

I will never understand why I can tolerate other kinds of pain far better than needles. Makes no sense.

[meepodeekin.livejournal.com]

I had a bad experience with novocaine as a little kid, probably similar to yours. Since then I've been terrified of novocaine. Luckily so far I've had good teeth and have only needed a couple of fillings, which I can handle without any meds. Gd help me when I start needing root canals and such.