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Jan. 12th, 2015 04:59 pmLess than 24h to go, and I realized I never posted here about this oops.
So okay, back in June I got a cavity, and the tooth situation in that area is wacky. I have for quite a while had an "extra tooth" growing just inside the premolars on the lower left side. The dentist would have removed it had I been normal, but I'm not and dental surgery is verybad with FOP and it wasn't really interfering.
Except the problem now is that the extra tooth -- which turns out to actually be an offshoot of one of the premolars, joined below the gumline -- forms a very tight triangle with the two adjacent premolars, and that area is a bitch to clean. So the cavity, forming on a tooth face inside that triangle, was sort of an eventuality.
We got the decay cleaned out (with no anaesthesia, which is fun and exciting) and a temp filling put in, but there was no way to do a permanent filling, especially something that wouldn't cause problems for the gum. So it came down to "the tooth needs to come out."
Which, obviously, is not really doable without anaesthesia. Because I am a special snowflake and can't do local (I technically could but it would 100%-probability trigger a FOP flareup fusing my jaw), that requires general anaesthesia. For which I am also a special snowflake, because of fused neck/spine, and back in 2000-ish when I had a procedure done (D&C, so not invasive but still requiring me being out) the anaesthesiologists wrote a paper on it.
So the whole tooth extraction thing is scheduled for tomorrow.
For a surgical procedure it’s fairly minor, but it’s still a surgical procedure, and my jaw is one of the only mostly-unaffected joints I have left, and there’s additional fun because I can’t do standing transfers but they can’t do the procedure with me in the chair, and it don’t know how long post-op hospital time will be -- I expect it is outpatient and not overnight or anything, but surely there is waking-up-from-anaesthesia time -- or how long recovery will be or what to expect or anything aaaaaaaa.
Plus, there is a chance that my jaw will fuse up regardless of precautions they take. And I know that it wouldn't be the end of the world -- but it would change what I can eat and how I eat it, and would affect my singing. I’d still be able to sing at church, but I don’t know if I’d be able to continue in the main choir that I do, because proper singing requires opening the jaw, and a closed jaw doesn’t give the right sound quality. And I have this feeling like it’s inevitable, like a big tidal wave about to crash down on me, and I have no high ground to go to. The one “positive” that would result -- well, two, sort of -- one, a lot of FOP people with fused jaws have to have teeth taken out to allow a way for food to get in, and I’d already have gotten that out of the way; and two, I promised myself years back that if/when my jaw ever fused that I could get my ears pierced as a “reward”, and thus be able to wear shiny dangly pretties.
But not thinking about that.
Too much, anyway.
My dad will be there (good on a number of respects; doctors listen to older professorial authoritative men better than they listen to silly little disabled girls, and he speaks decent medicalese, and he's very familiar with FOP treatments and procedures and stuff), and someone from my church will be there, and with luck everything will go smoothly and there won't be any complications.
Logic brain is saying everything is going to be fine, and reminding me that my word of the year is trust. Chicken little brain is running in panicked circles flailing about all the stuff that could go wrong. Guess which is louder. (Rhetorical, that.)
(For those of you that want more specific info, for prayers or good vibes or candlelighting or whatever: it is scheduled for 3:45 tomorrow, west coast US timezone (P*T, but I can never remember whether we're in daylight or standard). Procedure should be less than an hour unless the tooth is spectacularly stubborn. Anaesthesia recovery takes whothefuckknows, at which point I go home and take painkillers and use ice packs [which my fingers started to type as ice picks; no, just no] and perform the rather awkward maneuver of drinking fluids through a straw without putting any suction/pressure on my teeth [it's doable, just weird] and hopefully get better.)
So okay, back in June I got a cavity, and the tooth situation in that area is wacky. I have for quite a while had an "extra tooth" growing just inside the premolars on the lower left side. The dentist would have removed it had I been normal, but I'm not and dental surgery is verybad with FOP and it wasn't really interfering.
Except the problem now is that the extra tooth -- which turns out to actually be an offshoot of one of the premolars, joined below the gumline -- forms a very tight triangle with the two adjacent premolars, and that area is a bitch to clean. So the cavity, forming on a tooth face inside that triangle, was sort of an eventuality.
We got the decay cleaned out (with no anaesthesia, which is fun and exciting) and a temp filling put in, but there was no way to do a permanent filling, especially something that wouldn't cause problems for the gum. So it came down to "the tooth needs to come out."
Which, obviously, is not really doable without anaesthesia. Because I am a special snowflake and can't do local (I technically could but it would 100%-probability trigger a FOP flareup fusing my jaw), that requires general anaesthesia. For which I am also a special snowflake, because of fused neck/spine, and back in 2000-ish when I had a procedure done (D&C, so not invasive but still requiring me being out) the anaesthesiologists wrote a paper on it.
So the whole tooth extraction thing is scheduled for tomorrow.
For a surgical procedure it’s fairly minor, but it’s still a surgical procedure, and my jaw is one of the only mostly-unaffected joints I have left, and there’s additional fun because I can’t do standing transfers but they can’t do the procedure with me in the chair, and it don’t know how long post-op hospital time will be -- I expect it is outpatient and not overnight or anything, but surely there is waking-up-from-anaesthesia time -- or how long recovery will be or what to expect or anything aaaaaaaa.
Plus, there is a chance that my jaw will fuse up regardless of precautions they take. And I know that it wouldn't be the end of the world -- but it would change what I can eat and how I eat it, and would affect my singing. I’d still be able to sing at church, but I don’t know if I’d be able to continue in the main choir that I do, because proper singing requires opening the jaw, and a closed jaw doesn’t give the right sound quality. And I have this feeling like it’s inevitable, like a big tidal wave about to crash down on me, and I have no high ground to go to. The one “positive” that would result -- well, two, sort of -- one, a lot of FOP people with fused jaws have to have teeth taken out to allow a way for food to get in, and I’d already have gotten that out of the way; and two, I promised myself years back that if/when my jaw ever fused that I could get my ears pierced as a “reward”, and thus be able to wear shiny dangly pretties.
But not thinking about that.
Too much, anyway.
My dad will be there (good on a number of respects; doctors listen to older professorial authoritative men better than they listen to silly little disabled girls, and he speaks decent medicalese, and he's very familiar with FOP treatments and procedures and stuff), and someone from my church will be there, and with luck everything will go smoothly and there won't be any complications.
Logic brain is saying everything is going to be fine, and reminding me that my word of the year is trust. Chicken little brain is running in panicked circles flailing about all the stuff that could go wrong. Guess which is louder. (Rhetorical, that.)
(For those of you that want more specific info, for prayers or good vibes or candlelighting or whatever: it is scheduled for 3:45 tomorrow, west coast US timezone (P*T, but I can never remember whether we're in daylight or standard). Procedure should be less than an hour unless the tooth is spectacularly stubborn. Anaesthesia recovery takes whothefuckknows, at which point I go home and take painkillers and use ice packs [which my fingers started to type as ice picks; no, just no] and perform the rather awkward maneuver of drinking fluids through a straw without putting any suction/pressure on my teeth [it's doable, just weird] and hopefully get better.)