Gum Update

Well things are going fairly well. Not much pain at all. Some discomfort. The main thing is figuring out how to chew my food.

But there is a very funny story to tell. Wednesday night I'm just about to go upstairs when I realize I haven't taken my pain medication. I'm not in much pain but the best thing to do is to take it just in case the pain decides to flair up.

I've turned off all the lights on the first floor. The upstairs hall light is on. I go back into the kitchen to take my Ibuprofen. Now here's a little back ground. The bottle of Ibuprofen that I have in the kitchen I bought at Giant foods. It is from a company called CareOne. It just so happens that I also bought a bottle of stool softener. It's from the same company. The bottles are of similar size. The colors used on the labels are sort of the same too.

I walk into the kitchen reach into the cabinet take down a bottle. I take the cap off and get out four pills. I'm supposed to take four of the regular strength Ibuprofen. I have the pills in my hand and think these feel like gel caps. The Ibuprofen is a tiny little pill. I turn on the kitchen light and see that in my hand are four pills but they're the stool softeners. Needless to say I put them back and got out the Ibuprofen.

Definitely dodged a bullet actually in this case a pill. I can only imagine what my night would have been like if I'd taken the stool softener. Here's a picture of the two bottles.

I had a Frenectomy Today

That's not something you get to say every day.

It is part of the fun process of shoring up my receding gums. Part of a fun multi year process of moving gum material from other parts of my mouth to my gums that are receding. This first part was to cut the frenum in my lower set of teeth. This will help in the big gum graft that will go there later. That probably won't happen until next year.

So here's a little back ground:

There are many frenae in the mouth, such as the strand along the middle base of your tongue, or on the middle inside of your upper or lower lip.An overly short frenum below the tongue restricts tongue movement and affects speech. Shortened frenae on the inside of the lips pull on the gum tissue. This can cause the gum to recede away from the teeth or gaps between the teeth to develop.

My periodontist said I didn't have a really bad problem, but I would need this done as the first step in the whole gum graft process.

All I can say is what fun!

But actually it wasn't very bad. Well I should say it hasn't been very bad so far. I had an appointment at 10:30 today. It took less than 30 minutes from start to finish. He numbed the area where he was going to make the incision. I could barely feel the Novocaine when he gave it to me. Then it was pretty quick. I was able to see the thread he was using for the stitches.

He then put some material as he said sort of like Silly Putty around the stitches. This is essentially a dressing that hardens. The idea is to keep it on until the next appointment which is next week.

I was told to go home and take it easy. Put some ice on it. Eat soft food for the first day. After that I can eat just about anything except particulate foods (seeds, nuts, popcorn, etc.).

I was told to make sure I took pain medication even if I didn't have any real pain. He said I needed between 600-800 mg of a pain reliever. He said he would write me a prescription or I could just take 4 of the extra strength dose of whatever pain reliever I liked. Anything that is except aspirin because aspirin is a blood thinner.

So I'm home now and I'm going to take it easy for the rest of the day. Lie down and read my book and take an nice nap.