Had A Filling Break

I just got back from the dentist. This is the piece that broke loose. (Much enlarged.)

It was an old metal filling, dating back at least to my teen years, if not pre-teen. I'm nearly forty so I guess my folks got their money's worth. The dentist put in a new-fangled type filling that matches the tooth. She put it in in layers with a syringe and the assistant held a UV light gun up to it to cure it. Pretty neat.

IVF And Tooth Update

IVF
We went in for another progress check. The follicles are still growing, and still very close in size, but still a bit small. The doctor thinks we'll do the retrieval most likely Saturday, Friday at the earliest. My wife is feeling very bloated and is worried about what it will be like after the retrieval. We found a couple drinks that should help: SmartWater and Fruit2O. They are similar to Gatorade, which helped last time, but don't have sugar. They gave us (though will no doubt charge us for) extra doses of her meds for some of the extra days, and will be having more mailed to us.

Tooth
Well, as far as I can tell I've done everything I should, or at least according to instructions. The first morning after the extraction it looked like there was a swelling toward the rear of the site. It didn't hurt, so I thought nothing of it.

The second morning I checked it in the mirror and noticed a pink-red object resting on the tooth below. I took it out and it looked to be a piece of soft tissue about the size of half a pea. I put it in a zip-lock bag to show the dentist if I decided to go in for a check, but my wife convinced me it was probably normal. (I think she was just trying to allay my fears.) I tossed it in the trash, which has since been picked up. The swelling I had noticed before was gone, presumable in the trash.

This morning while rinsing with mouthwash I felt something floating around in my mouth. I spit it into the sing away from the drain hoping to see what it was, but naturally it swished right down the drain with the mouthwash. I got a glimpse of something dark, maybe black, and narrow and maybe twice the length of a grain of rice. I figured it was a stray bit of food, but then I felt what felt like one of my stitches dangling against my tongue. Uh oh. I began to think it was maybe a bit of the thread or the knot I had just spit out. I looked at the site with a flashlight and a Craftsman inspection mirror but everything seemed okay.

This evening at Secret Headquarters it was aching a bit. I looked again and it seems like the gums have shrunk back a bit. Also the stitches seem looser. Back home just now I looked with the inspection mirror again and saw a bit of white in the middle. We're calling the dentist tomorrow morning.

IVF Stimulation Progress Check Yesterday - Tooth Extraction Today

IVF
Yesterday morning we went in for our first stimulation progress check of this our second IVF cycle. There looks to be ten or eleven follicles, but they're all a bit on the small size so it looks like we'll have to go a bit long again. That means we probably won't do the retrieval on the 20th. (Hopefully it won't be on Thanksgiving day, although my wife's mother's turkey tends to be a bit dry so it wouldn't be a total loss.) This time, though, they all look about the same size, so hopefully they'll all grow at closer to the same rate than last time. Looks good so far. My wife is still her worried self, of course. We go back Monday for another look.

Tooth
This morning I had a tooth extracted. Saturday we ate at Joe's Crab Shack, and when I bit down on a particularly hard nugget of fried batter that was on a piece of fish I felt a bit of pain. At first I thought it was a bit of fish bone, but after further tongue probing it felt more like a loose filling. My wife called in and made a dentist appointment for today. I went in figuring I would get a replacement filling, or the initial work for a crown. Nope The tooth had cracked down the middle and had to be pulled.

The dentist numbed me up - the shot in the palette was the worst part of the whole procedure - and started to work. It broke apart easily enough at first, but as he got down to the root it got harder. I guess that was a good thing, since it turned out the bone is in good shape. After the tooth was all out he put in some freeze-dried cadaver bone to promote bone growth in the socket. (Grrrrr! I'm Frankenstein!) He put a plug of collagen fiber on top and closed with three stitches. It occurred to me as he was moving around to improve his angle to put in the stitches that a mouthpiece with tiny teleoperated arms and a camera could make that sort of work easier. Maybe I could work with someone on that and get a patent.

Anyway, it's been a couple hours now and the novocaine is largely worn off. They gave me a kit with gauze pads I'm supposed to change every 15-20 minutes until the bleeding stops, and an instant cold pack that lasted nowhere near the 6-8 hours called for in the instructions they gave me. Luckily we had one in the Secret Headquarters first aid kit. My wife is off now getting more and a reusable one, along with my vicadin prescription. I don't know if I'll really need it, but if I do I want it on hand. Tonight I'm supposed to sleep with an old towel on my pillow in case I drool pink. Being married I have no problem with a little blood on the sheets and mattress now and then, but I'd rather not have it on the pillowcase, so I guess I'll use the towel.

I go back in a week to get the stitches out. The dentist says I can opt for a bridge or implant any time I want down the road. I told him with the IVF money is tight right now, and he said I can wait and do it years from now with no problem. I'm hoping someone will have figured out how to grow a new tooth from stem cells by the time I'm ready. Heck, I'd be half inclined to do my whole mouth if they come out good enough. They say teeth are likely to be the first whole organs to be cloned from stem cells, so who knows. I'm tentatively scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, but the IVF schedule is still unfolding, so there could possibly be a conflict. We'll see.

What a week.