Day 1 post-implants. No pain at all to report. No bleeding, no swelling. Just a couple of new gaps to get used to until I get the crowns.
My dentist office was supposed to call me to check on me today. I guess they don’t care. 
mmm
Good for you. Dr. Thelma prescribes ice cream!
The staff cares, sort of. But it is Friday afternoon.
I still feel twinges from time to time on the second tooth (tooth 14, I believe), which was the one I had done a few years back. That one had been through 2 and a half root canals (one full RC, one second attempted RC, followed by going into the root from the side). This all began in 2004 or so. After the second / third procedures, it finally settled down for a while, then began to bug me again after a few years.
I went back to the dentist, who tried very hard to push me to go back to the endodontist. I flat out REFUSED.
A month or so later, it was gone and the implant placed. Which really allowed things to settle down.
Unfortunately, when they put the crown on, I developed those twinges again, as the spot was now getting pressure again. I think there’s just something hinky (technical term) in the anatomy there.
Make sure they size the crown right. When they put the crown on the tooth, I could feel it pressing against the tooth behind (# 15) - which already had a crown. Two days later, the back tooth’s crown popped off! Apparently the pressure from the new crown weakened the cement.
Dentist reglued it. But flossing was always a problem - shredded the floss most of the time when I tried flossing between 14 and15.
A couple years later, same thing happened.
And late last year, a THIRD time. When I went in to have that reglued, the fricking thing BROKE. Dentist had to do a temporary crown. I was pretty peeved - I pointed out that this was the third time it had happened, and that the crown on #14 had literally never fit well. The dentist wound up waiving the part of the fee for the new crown, that was not covered by insurance.
And I can now floss without problems.
To be fair, sometimes there needs to be a gap - depends on what they think of the state of the jaw at the time of the extraction.
I mentioned earlier that when I had my second one done, before the extraction I discussed with the dentist whether they could do both at once. He said he would not know until he got in there. Since I was going to be sedated, I said that it would be great if he could do them both, but left it up to him to decide at the time.
He was able to do both though it required some bone graft. That had not been needed with the first implant - but that tooth had been gone for a year or more before I decided to go the implant route, so the hole in the jaw had filled in already. My husband’s one implant went the same way (out and in same day).
I was told all my teeth were in bad shape, or would be eventually, so why not have them all taken out and do an implant-slash-bridge, with anchors implanted in dainty dots along my upper and lower jawbones, which would hold two horseshoe-shaped bridges. That would save money over having implants done piecemeal. And I fell for it.
Multiple extractions that were very unpleasant. Temporary choppers that broke quite often (I eventually started making my own out of Friendly Plastic craft pellets that melt in hot water and are moldable before they cool, and are actually quite strong once they do, because why replace brittle temps with more brittle temps, which came with an implied moral judgment that I ought not to bite so hard.) Each extraction included insertion of dead-guy ground up bone powder that took months to settle in, before they could install the anchors. Finally was ready to receive my perms. First set I got, made from zirconium of some sort (and looking way too perfect like I’m some sort of vain American tourist, which may be true but not what I wanted) broke. They put in more temps, which also broke. Am awaiting new perms. Total time spent, three years and counting. Cost, don’t ask.
The new uppers and lowers feel weird, like if there were a layer of Topps bubble gum, the kind that was a slab that came with baseball cards, inserted between my teeth and my gums. Sort of rubbery, sort of spongy. Getting used to it is hard. I have this urge to clench which is mostly unconscious and hard to stop. But that’s how it’s gonna be from now on.
I can’t imagine that leaving whatever natural teeth I had in place until they absolutely had to go would have been any worse. Wanna trade places?
And here I am fresh from the dentist office with two brand new implants and a smile that I will be more than happy to deploy going forward.
It was a lonnng path (a year and a half since I took the first step) but my day has arrived. The final visit was a little disconcerting - the dentist was cranking on my implants with a torque wrench, no pain but much scary pressure - but all in all not as big an ordeal as I had feared.
I am as happy as a clam at high tide.
Implants: mmm-recommended.
mmm
You’ll need to be careful to clean carefully at the base of the implanted teeth.
Now I just do normal brushing and flossing. My implant tooth was put in 2012.
Bravo, my friend! 