Implants after HNC, part 2a

I am not disappointed or surprised that my wildly hopeful implant abutment procedure has hit some problems. It was always going to be problematic.

On Sunday am I woke up with an implant screw loose in my mouth and only 3 out of 4 visible/palpable implants. I immediately panicked and thought an actual implant had come out! But no, after looking at it closely and doing some Googling I realised that an abutment – that screws into the implant – had come out.

That night I had worn my mouth guard for the first time since the abutment procedure and had slept soundly, waking with a stiff mouth. I was sure the screw had come out because of the pressure of the plastic guard. The back abutment felt bent so I felt bad about that too. If the abutment had come off the middle implant, where I could see nothing, that might be fixable. Bending an abutment out of shape? Bad. The mouth guard was for earlier issues and was obviously the wrong thing to do at this point.

It was a weird morning. I’d stayed up late the night before watching the Australian election but woke at 6 am with (quite literally) a screw loose. To assuage my panic I emailed the Oral Health Unit’s scheduler right away hoping she’d see it first thing Monday morning. She is a fairly recent addition to the unit and is a real godsend because I have her contact details.

I was pretty devastated. My middle implant area seemed to experience trauma from above from the eye tooth and trauma from below from two implants. I was obviously biting it because I could feel lumpy bits of gum and the whole area was very sore.

Catastrophe. Maybe they’d have to take the abutments out. Maybe I really had bent the back one. After all my hopes and dreams of normal lips and some teeth and all the hard work of the department … Not to mention the cost to the service.

Fortunately I have learnt one skill from my 14 years with HNC and that is to switch the worry off until I have to face the issue. I got through Sunday and on Monday morning at 7.15 am I had a phone call from the scheduler and an appointment for Tuesday. That made me feel better right away and some of my catastrophic projections had weakened by this time.

I would never wish my long practice of enduring HNC-related ups and downs on anyone but it has given me a more philosophical attitude. So far anyway. It’s NOT unusual courage. I was not so easy going when I first suffered from cancer. Practice.

So yesterday with the help of some codeine, I took the long trip to Middlemore again. I had the loose screw in a plastic bag.

The young max fax surgeon in his yellow PPE came out with the nurse to meet me and breathed a huge sigh of relief when he looked in my mouth. Most of the gum had healed. The three remaining implants looked fine and the one that had come adrift was the easiest one to screw back on. Phew!

More of concern was how I am biting on the two central implants (just left of centre) and biting my inner lip so it’s sore and swollen. He said to WEAR the implant and not to worry if the screw came out again!!!! He said to make sure the Savacol mouthwash got into the area and gave me antibiotics just in case. Come back next week.

I’m very sore at times and the mouth guard is not very comfortable so I can’t wear it constantly but I’m also very relieved. It’s going to take two weeks to heal up properly he said and I just need to ride it out.

So Sunday morning’s shock horror wake up call was not so bad after all. However, it’s interesting how I blamed myself. Reading this through I think my son might be right when he says I have a pathological fear of causing a bother.

But we have two good outcomes: I didn’t ruin my implants and the Australian election which I had watched so keenly was a win for climate change action.