It was with a sense of fatalism that I went to my prosthodontic appointment on Tuesday. It has been 10 months now since I lost my teeth and I was giving up hope of ever getting my implant reconstruction completed. There’d been another three week delay and it felt like the last straw. One of the implant caps was hurting my inner lip again – on and off – and often makes me wince when I have a glass of water.
But the appointment went quite well. The bad implant was so buried in my tissue that the prosthodontist almost decided not to proceed with the fitting and arrange for me to have surgery first to release the lip. Fortunately he changed his mind and went ahead with fitting a base plate for the bottom jaw. I couldn’t see exactly what he was doing but he had the devices pictured, unscrewed two of my four implant caps and screwed the base plant or waxy part of it down with one post.
Then miracle of miracles he had a waxy model for my upper jaw too and while that wouldn’t stay up, it did fill in all the gaps and for a few minutes I had both sets of gums filled with waxy stuff that gave me the feeling of a complete set of teeth. Although my inner lip was tender I felt relief at having the lower lip pushed out a little bit. After surgery, when it is released it should be good.
I know the picture is a glorious mess but I was happy. This was progress. My facial contours had filled out. The base plates seemed to fit okay and I felt hope for the future. I have to wait for surgery but I’m usually good at waiting.
