I Need This Like I Need a Hole In My Head

I have a hole in my head.

Well, technically, it's a hole in my mouth. I will explain.

Remember last week, when I mentioned my trip to the endodontist? When the dentist peeled back my gum and did freaky things to my mouth? Well, when I left the dentist last Friday, he had neatly sewn my gum back in place, and sent me on my way with antibiotics, and instructions to return to have the stitches out in 10 days.

Everything seemed to be fine over the weekend. I followed his instructions carefully - soft foods for a day, rinse with warm salt water twice a day. It was all good.

Then, on Tuesday, I started to feel funny, kind of achy, infectiony funny. At some point during the day, I noticed that a piece of string, was dangling in my mouth, as if one of the stitches had come out. Then I started poking around with my tongue, and couldn't feel any stitches up there any more. Hmmm...odd. So I got a flashlight and a mirror and managed to peer up there on the roof of my mouth and...ew. The little flap of skin that the endodontist had sewn back in place had turned a rather nasty shade of yellowy-white.

This didn't seem to be a good thing.

So I called the dentist, but by this time, it was the end of the day on Tuesday, and he was out of the office on Wednesday. Golf, I'm thinking. The nurse instructed me to keep with my antibiotics, and come in first thing Thursday morning.

On Wednesday morning, I woke up to discover that the little flap of skin was now flapping around loose in my mouth. Double ew. Then, while I was eating lunch, the little flap actually came off, and I...swallowed it. TRIPLE EW.

Now, I had an actual hole in the roof on my mouth, through which protruded my jawbone! Yes a HOLE with BONE.

I sort of semi-freaked out. I had visions of reconstructive surgery. Skin grafts. Some dental plastic surgeon removing skin from my butt and grafting it to the top of my mouth!

On Thursday morning, I went back to the dentist. It's not a good thing when a dentist looks in your mouth and says "Well that's very strange."

The good news is that the tissue inside our mouths is extremely resilient and regenerative. He said that it will grow back. "It always does." he said casually.

He proceeded to apply a collagen treatment to the hole in my mouth, in an attempt to encourage the regrowth. I asked him if he could use a little of that collagen on the wrinkles on my face, which he found extremely funny. This puzzled me, as it seemed like this would be the first thing that just about anybody would say when someone is applying collagen to a hole in their mouth. I guessed that all of his other patients had no sense of humor.

The next day I figured out the reason he'd never heard this bad joke before. What he'd failed to tell me was that in his 40 years as an endodontist, he'd never had this happen to anyone. So he'd never actually used this collagen stuff for this reason before. In fact, after seeing me, he had called the pharmaceutical company, and told them about my highly unusual case. The drug people were very excited, and want him to carefully document my progress. Turns out, my dentist is a beta tester for them, and this is a new treatment!

So my hole is on the mend. By Friday, it was already much better, though the bone is still exposed. The pain is much better too, and the achy, infectiony feeling is gone.

Why does this kind of thing happen to me? I swear to God. Every time I get an ailment it's something weird. I can't tell you how many times I've had doctors say things like "I've never seen this before." I feel like all I do on this blog is complain about various ridiculous problems. Do I really have more oddball ailments than most people? Or is it just that I have this handy forum in which to gripe?

 

Comments

[VandyJ]

I know that it is never a good thing to hear your doctor say--Hmm, we don't usually see that. Hope you mend well.

[Mama Badger]

Uhm, yuck. That whole things sounds yucky. Especially in your mouth. But, on the bright side, you're on the frontier of emerging medicine, right? You go with your "forging new paths". But, still, yuck.

[Sarah at themommylogues]

Oh. My. Word.

I hope everything is back to normal very, very quickly. Because, yuck. And ew.

[Becky]

I would have lost my sh*t about nine times during that experience so congrats on keeping it together!

And you are contributing to medical science!!

[Jenni]

Frickin endodontists, man. I'm telling you.

[Pseudo]

Well, as long as you have weird stuff to gripe about, it's nice that you have a forum to do it in ; -)

[unmitigated me]

This is very important: You don't take Boniva or some other meds for osteoporosis, right? Email me.

[Aimee]

I was fine until you got to the exposed bone.

Gah.

And, um, I'm sorry about the hold in your head/mouth. But...gah.

[Elizabeth Cull]

I hope the hole in your mouth is all better now. I am surprised at your neutral description of how you got that hole in your jawbone in the first place. Don't worry, the human body has a unique way of healing itself. Stay healthy!

[Ted Grimmer]

I am glad you felt better on the following days and that there’s progress in your situation. It really helped that you called your dentist right away and didn’t try to mend it on your own. It’s true that our body tissues regenerate. It may take a while, but the inside of your mouth will surely go back to its normal appearance.