Tuesday, May 15, 2012

2 months 2 weeks

2 months 2 weeks
Day 6

I plan to upload progress pictures approximately every month. I also plan to upload the "Day 6" picture (baseline photo) every time too, just because it makes it easier to compare the progresses (if any).

It's still quite early on but there are actually some noticeable movements. For instance, the two teeth adjacent to the front teeth have moved forward quite a bit. This indeed constitutes great movement but only second to the teeth on the right side, which have greatly pushed themselves outward! I definitely didn't expect them to be out this far at this point given that I stopped turing the RPE a while ago. Nevertheless, I'm loving every moment of it.

Surprisingly after I got my wire changed (last week), my teeth did not hurt at all. My assumption is that all the pain went straight to the site of the tooth extraction. Speaking of the tooth extraction, the site is almost fully healed now -- more than half of the hole has regenerated healthy gum tissues. The gum tissues usually take 3-4 weeks to heal but after about a week I have been back to eating normally and have had no pain since the third day (which was mostly my jaw being sore).

Thursday, May 3, 2012

1/2 Extractions.

As the above title reads, I got a tooth extraction the other day. I went in expecting to get two extractions but the dentist wanted to only pulled one out. Why? His reasoning was that he didn't want my whole bottom jaw to be swore, which could limit my eating and talking. So he only pulled one first pre-molar out.

I got my bottom wisdom teeth pulled out in the office a few years back so I wasn't too nervous or scared this time around. The actually act of pulling it out did not hurt AT ALL. All thanks to local anaesthesia everything was numb. The only pain was a slight prick from the needles that were used to apply the anaesthesia into my gums. I was asked if I wanted to keep my tooth but I declined because I'm really not into these kinds of things (I lost my faith in the tooth fairy years ago).

The first few hours I basically just bit on pieces of gauzes to stop the bleeding and allow the blood to clot. At first it seemed like the bleeding would never stop because there was a lot of blood. However, the amount seemed like a lot because the blood was mixed with my salvia. Of course, the bleeding did stop eventually but I had to be careful not to agitate the area where the blood was clotting due to the fear of the clot loosening and/or breaking. For this reason, I was also advised not to spit, drink things out of a straw or even exercise.

The first two days made it difficult to eat. I was advised to stick to a liquid diet for the first 24 hours and then soft foods afterwards until it heals. I manage some soup in the first day though. I would have to say that the worst part of this whole process was trying to eat because there is a deep hole of blood in your mouth that seemed to suck every pieces of food into it. If I had the other tooth pulled out too, I cannot imagine how I would have eaten. Hence, I am glad the dentist only pulled out one tooth. Then again, I will have to go through this once again.

I'm on my fourth day since the extraction and the hole is starting to get smaller. Some areas beside the site of extraction (the gums) are healing and starting to lose its purple bruise colour.

When the site heals up a bit more I'll post some progress photos and of my new device that replaces the old RPE. I don't know what to call it so I'll just nickname it the RPE2 for now.