So, I went to my dentist complaining of tooth and jaw pain, pointing out that I had an ulcer on my gum that might be causing everything. It is on my bottom jaw, on the inside (under the tongue), about 8 mm below the rear edge of my molar furthest back, and I can only see it with a little mirror-on-a-stick.
She says, the ulcer’s the whole problem - it’s huge and deep - all the way down to the bone - my jawbone is exposed, she says. But it looks like it’s healing. It’s not infected but she puts me on penicillin anyway. This is 6 days ago.
And it seemed to be getting better, but then got a little more tender last night and this morning, so I put a little Anbesol on it with a Q-Tip. Much to my surprise, this dislodged a little object, which came away on the Q-Tip. I bled a bit but it has felt much less tender since.
This thing is about 3 mm in diameter, very hard, white on one side which is somewhat convex and smooth, with what looks like ingrown tissue or blood that won’t come off on the other side, which is rough and concave. It looks to me like bone or maybe part of a tooth.
What could this thing be??
I am not asking for advice - I already know what I am going to do - I’m going back if it doesn’t improve overnight, and just sticking with Dr.s orders as long as it is improving. But I’m curious as hell what this little guy is.
Will Repair, your post eerily anticipated what I just came back to add:
I never had any wisdom teeth. That is, they never grew in, they aren’t stuck back there, they don’t show up on X-rays. One dentist nearing retirement told me that is so rare that I was the only case he’d seen. Someplace else I heard it was pretty uncommon but still something like 2% of the population. Well, whatever.
This thing does look like a rudimentary tooth. The shiny convex side would be the part that was meant to chew, and the concave side, with its serrated edge, might be meant to take root.
This is just crazy enough to fit, maybe. Or maybe not. Will Repair, do you know more specifics about this sort of thing?
Eleusis, it isn’t a tonsillolith. I have had a couple of them, but they were soft, and didn’t come off of my jaw. Plus they - ah - smell distinctive. Not a bad guess, tho…
On two separate occasions, I’ve had something like that happen to me. Somehow, I got the skin scraped off the surface of the inside of my lower jaw. The scrape was deep enough to expose the bone to the air. When that happens, the natural reaction is for the bone to flake off a bit of the outside layer of itself. According to my dentist and the dental surgeon he sent me to, the treatment is simply to let it run its course. They also prescribed Peridex to help with the healing. A flake or two of bone came off (I felt the sharp edge against my tongue and I picked at it,) then the wound healed up.
Your dentist will want to see it now and then. Let her know if something really unusual or painful happens.
In a more general case than yours, another possibility would be bone fragments following wisdom tooth extraction. The force necessary to pull the tooth sometimes breaks off flakes of jawbone, and those can take a while to work their way out.
Maybe you are hoping for something clinical-sounding, but my dentist just called it “the bone is shedding.” It’s not something he sees every day, but it’s nothing to be worried about.
It’s useful to look at it with a flashlight and a dental mirror. Your tongue may feel it as huge, but the mirror will tell you how small it really is.
