I didn’t intend to write the next stage in my saga until I had the next appointment. However, lots of things have happened with my mouth since 13 December, so here goes.
The extra piece of composite that Simon put on my bottom plate has been successful in keeping my numb lip out. I’ve stopped biting it – a big win. But the structures in that limp corner of my mouth mean that any liquid like saliva or a drink come almost straight out (some of it) and I have to keep wiping my lips.
My speech has become worse. When I start talking at the start of the day there is a bubble of mucous blurring my words or at night when the whole speaking system is tired and nerves tingle I croak and speak with difficulty.
If I’m talking to someone in a cafe, customers look around to hear where the loud croaking voice is coming from.
I think the problems are caused by my long lasting saliva issues like thick saliva, saliva pooling in one corner of my mouth and sometimes a very dry mouth. So they are nothing new but there’s something else making speech and swallowing and drooling worse. I think it’s the layer of acrylic Simon has put over the bottom teeth while I’m healing. It forms a rigid fence over which I have to direct fluids I’m swallowing.
Thin fluids like water and tea can go down the wrong way and make me cough. Thicker fluids like milky coffee, soups, porridge and smoothies are okay. Simon is evasive about when the acrylic will come off or when a different prosthesis with bigger teeth and without the acrylic will be installed. Could get no info out of him.
This is not to say the present prosthesis is not a miracle. I have a full arch on my lower jaw, some of it over a skin graft and it feels pretty good. The skin graft has shrunk now and I have to be careful to squirt water under the rim of the prosthesis. Berry seeds can lurk.
I have a less disfigured mouth and don’t always feel the need to wear a mask when I go out.
Apart from the acrylic which I am mystified about, top teeth should improve speech and dribbling. Maybe eating.
NZ shuts down over Christmas and New Year – sometimes for about 6 weeks – at least four. I accepted a long delay until the next step, and knew people would be coming back only this week. Of course I heard nothing. Would my upper teeth – the previous set lost after all my months of waiting – be ready? Would they only ring me when they were? Lab would have been closed over Christmas …
I decided that the default option should always be to give them a nudge, hard as I find that to do for various complicated reasons. So I contacted the scheduler yesterday who sounded refreshed after the hols and I didn’t even need to nudge. She will ring me back when she’s found out about the upper plate and I might get an appointment as soon as next week.
Hope springs eternal – actually it doesn’t because as Simon says (he works mainly in private) “The hospital is slow.”