I had an appointment at the hospital yesterday to see the dental surgeon. I actually thought I would have to wait much longer but after my recent infection my dentist rang the hospital and chased things up.
Before my appointment I went up to F22 to speak to the nurses on the ward. I wanted to ask the ward sister to chase up my clinic appointment with Dr P so I can start the treatment plan Mr E told me that St Marks had suggested. But I also wanted to let them know that over the last couple of weeks I’ve started to feel pretty crappy again.
I was last discharged from hospital 2 days before Christmas and in my eagerness to get home I left without getting a follow up appointment in clinic. The first 6 weeks of the year I’ve been the most well I’ve been for probably the last 2 years but the last 2 weeks or so I’ve started to struggle. I’m going to the loo a lot; sometimes every half an hour which is giving me a really sore bottom. I’m struggling with pain, fatigue and nausea and I’m really keen to nip it in the bud before it gets out of hand and I end up really unwell.
Whenever I go up to the ward I always take cakes for the staff as I know that it cheers them up. Plus a bit of bribery never did any harm! Some of them didn’t recognise me in clothes and with my purple/pink hair. It was nice to see them and catch up with them- going to the ward is like going to a second home. They’ve taken down my info and will chase up a clinic appointment for me.
Then it was off to the maxillofacial department. When I got there I had to fill out a questionnaire about my medical history and medications I take but because there’s so much to write I just did bullet points. The dental surgeon has access to my medical records so they can easily check it out if they want more details. I was waiting almost 45 minutes before they called my name. But instead of going in to see the dental surgeon they instead sent me for an X-ray. Apparently the ones my dentist had sent over weren’t quite right so they wanted me to have a whole mouth X-ray. This was completely different from having an X-ray in the dentist chair, like in this photo…
Instead it was a stand up machine, where I had to bite down on a piece of plastic while the machine rotated 360 degrees around my head, like in this photo…
After another 30 minute wait I was finally called in to see the dental surgeon; a no nonsense woman who was very plain speaking and matter of fact about everything which I quite like. She spent a long time examining my teeth as there’s potentially 3 large molars that need removing. After lots of prodding and poking we sat at her desk to look at the X-ray and talk about the options.
The biggest problem I’m having is with the molar in the bottom left of my mouth- this is the one that was recently infected and the one that causes me pain day to day. She said this definitely has to be removed and the sooner the better. The other two molars, one on the bottom right and the other at the top left, are both broken and have huge fillings in that cannot be maintained much longer. But while they do need to come out they’re not causing me many problems so are less urgent. I also have the issue of my bottom wisdom teeth growing sideways. Yes, bloody sideways!! I already knew about this, having been referred to the hospital a couple of years ago to look at having them removed. But one of them sits so close to the nerve the dental surgeon at the time said there would be a very high chance of facial paralysis so I decided to just leave them be and put up with the occasional niggles I get from them.
So the options she presented to me was to have all three teeth removed under a general anaesthetic or have just the really bad one removed using local. I wanted to opt for the easier option and take the general but she told me that the waiting list is really, really long and even though my medical issues put me at the top of the list there are lots of other people with their own medical reasons for being at the top of the list too. The preferred option, according to her, was to take out the bad one using local as the waiting list is much, much shorter. She did say though that it would be difficult as the tooth has unusually long roots and is very close to the nerve so there is a higher risk of temporary or long term damage to the nerve which could cause tingling, pain or paralysis of part of the face. Of course even my bloody teeth couldn’t be normal so it won’t be a straight forward procedure! And even though I wanted to wimp out and have the general I am acutely aware that if the infection comes back and ends up in my blood then I could end up losing my Hickman line and with it the ability to have my feeds. So I pulled on my big girl pants and told her I’d have the local 😬
I did ask whether I could be sedated along with the local but with my medical conditions that would require an anaesthetist so that would mean I would be on the list along with those wanting/needing a general anaesthetic. So if that were the case I might as well have a general. I did warn her that when I last had dental work done and in my last few Hickman line insertions the local anaesthetic hasn’t seemed to work very well on me. I think that I ended up having about 5x the normal dose of local when I had my last Hickman line put in so that does worry me. She did say that it was still worth trying and if the local didn’t take effect then they would stop and put me on the waiting list for it to be done under a general.
She told me that it still might be 4-8 weeks before I’d get an appointment but at 7.45am on Thursday my phone rang and it was the secretary wanting to book me in. So I’ve got an appointment on 23rd March, first thing in the morning. I’m a bit gutted as I’m supposed to be going to see Sarah Millican that night and I don’t know if I will be up to it or not so I might end up missing it, but I know this has to be done and takes priority over a night out. So I’ve got to last 3 weeks without the infection getting bad, or me talking myself out of having it done. Lots of people tell me I’m brave for what I go through with my illness but I’m not really. It’s more a determination to survive, more out of necessity than anything else. But I’m not going to lie- I’m actually pretty nervous about having this tooth out. Give me an endoscopy or enema over a tooth extraction any day!
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