A Week of Needles

It seems that there are times when I have a whole bunch of medical appointments all coming together. Then there are other times when I don’t have any. This past week was one of the former.

 

Colonoscopy

On Tuesday I had a colonoscopy. I’d had one back in February where they found several polyps. None of them were cancerous, so that’s good. And that’s why I have these procedures – to remove any before they become cancerous. But one was big enough that it had to be taken out in multiple pieces – hence the reason for scheduling another colonoscopy so soon afterwards.

The colonoscopy itself is not a big deal to me – you’re under general anesthesia and don’t feel a thing. It’s the 24 hours leading up to it that are disrupting. Liquid diet all day, then the dreaded “bowel prep” – one batch at 6pm, then a second batch at 1am, each followed a short time thereafter by multiple trips to the toilet. The end result is practically no sleep.

I’ve done these often enough that I’m pretty relaxed at the GI center. In fact, the nurse giving me instructions jokingly asked if I could be her patient for the whole day since I made it so easy for her – I guess that she often has patients without such a positive attitude.

Unfortunately for me, it appears that my body is in a never-ending polyp-production cycle. I had five more that needed to be removed. All quite small, but it means that I’ll be doing this again in about a year.

Two days of disruption – Monday for prep and Tuesday for procedure!

 

Implant Removal

My upper teeth are not individual implants but are two pieces of solid titanium, each anchored with several implants. That makes them very strong. But it also means that whenever I bite it puts a lot of pressure on the individual teeth/implants in my lower jaw. I had four of my remaining real teeth in front removed earlier this year and they are healing nicely in preparation for replacement by implants later this year.

But several of the older implants along the sides were also showing the effect of that pressure and they were starting to become loose or otherwise failing. Last month, my dentist sent me to see the oral surgeon and they jointly determined that a number of them had to be removed. After the jaw heals up from the removal, we’ll put in new ones that are connected to give them the necessary strength.

Thursday was removal day. First, I visited my dentist who drilled out the small hole in the enamel so he could reach the screw attaching the tooth to the implant socket. This was a fairly quick procedure. You can see what he took out here.

[Removed artificial teeth]

 

Then it was off to the oral surgeon for a much longer and more complex procedure. These four implants have been in my lower jaw for many years. I lost track of how many shots of lidocaine he gave me across my lower jaw from one end to the other. That’s the worst part of the procedure! Two of the sockets he was able to unscrew from my jaw with the use of the dental equivalent of a socket driver (and a fair amount of pressure). But the other two were so grown in (as they are supposed to be) that even a lot of pressure would not unscrew them. So they had to be drilled out – using the dental equivalent of a small hole saw that would drill out the bone around the socket.

In all, I was sitting in the dental chair for over an hour and a half and when I got up I had no feeling in my lower jaw or a good portion of my tongue. The rest of the day was again a liquid/soft food diet like I had on Monday, bolstered by some pain killer. Another not-fun day!

 

Giving Blood

As I’ve noted before, I make a regular practice of giving blood about every eight weeks. This was week eight and I had scheduled a time at the local blood bank a few weeks ago – before knowing that the implant removal would also get scheduled this week. So I went ahead with it anyway early this morning. Not a big deal for me, but means that I have to follow the regimen of drinking extra liquids and no strenuous activity for the day until my body begins to make up the pint I am now short.

 

Summary

That’s four days out of five with a modified diet or activity plan. And lots of needles – one on Tuesday for the anesthesia, seven or eight (I lost count) on Thursday for the lidocaine in addition to one for a small blood draw to irrigate the plugs they put in the holes afterwards, and one on Friday for withdrawing a pint in addition to the finger stick to check my iron levels. I’ve about run out of places to put holes in my arms!

Nothing else scheduled for the next few months except follow-up visits. This week has been enough!