Post-Surgery Update

It's finally over!! I'm so happy. As I stated, I was very nervous about this. It actually wasn't TOO bad. The worst part was sticking a needle in (twice) and numbing the roof of my mouth on both sides. That hurt a bit but it subsided after a few minutes. My surgery lasted an hour and a half, mainly because they ran into some slight complications due to trying to get the bleeding to stop and they had trouble getting the bracket to bond to the tooth (because of too much bleeding). Okay, so I'm going to try my best to explain what they did.

He explained to me before he began that he would be going in from the back instead of the front. Which kind of surprised me a little. He said it was because the teeth were positioned differently and it would require they move in a certain direction to pull them down. So when I look in the mirror right now, I can't see what they did because it's behind the teeth, instead of viewing the canines from the front. He made a small incision at first. Then a bunch of whirring noises from what I think was a drill or some tool to basically prepare the tooth to have a bracket attached. Here's where the trouble started. So my gum was bleeding as to be expected, but they couldn't get it to stop right away. We tried gauze. He even tried to put a stitch in to see and that didn't work. Then he used some sort of hot tool to cauterize it. Ugh, I could smell the burning and feel the heat. I didn't like that too much. That basically got most of the bleeding to stop, but he still had trouble getting the bracket to bond. At one point, there were 3 people in the room working on my mouth. They also sprayed some kind of acid into the wound area. Not sure what that does exactly. He ended up deciding to expose more of the tooth and cutting a little bit more. Finally, they were able to bond the bracket to the tooth. By this time, about an hour had gone by. When he started to work on the other side, it seemed like the numbing was just starting to wear off because I did feel a teeny bit. So he hit me up again with another dose of numbing. The other side was much faster. He still had issues getting the bracket to bond. He did not cauterize that side. He just put some gauze in my mouth and I held it for a bit while he left the room and then came back. Eventually, they were able to get it to bond to the tooth and I was all done. To my knowledge, there are no stitches.

They gave me 3 prescriptions. Amoxicillin (antibiotic) to prevent infection, Acetaminophen with codeine, and ibuprofen. The little gold chain that hangs down from the brackets are "attached" to the archwire with wax. During the surgery, he pushed on both of the canines and wiggled them a bit (I actually felt that and it felt kinda weird) and said they were moving so he is pretty confident that they will come down. This is great news!

So today after getting my prescriptions I've just been taking it easy and relaxing on the couch. I can't drive when I take the acetaminophen. Pain level really isn't bad at all but for now, I've been taking the painkillers as directed, at least for today. Tomorrow I'm probably going to just stick with the ibuprofen. I don't need to get addicted to an opioid, ya know?

The "no-no's" include: no heavy rinsing, no heavy swishing, no mouthwash for at least 2 days, no carbonated beverages (it could dislodge the blood clots), no drinking through a straw, no fruit with seeds, no brushing of the affected area, no alcoholic beverages (aw, man!!)  and I have to do a salt and warm water rinse starting tomorrow. I can't eat; it's very difficult. So pretty much all I've had since I got home were 2 Nesquik chocolate milks, a little thing of rice pudding, and a decent amount of applesauce. My stomach is not happy.

The doc gave me his cell phone number should I have any questions/concerns. He said sometimes the brackets come off the teeth and if that happens, to come back in as soon as possible to get them re-attached. So I'll be chilling until Tuesday (unless I have to go back to have them re-attached). The sooner my mouth heals so I eat actual food, the better.