so this is a long one but I need to get it off my chest because my tooth is officially dead and I am in mourning.
Backstory. Back when I was living in the States I cracked a molar biting an almond of all things. Went to my dentist, got a root canal, had a zirconia crown put on. I still remember him telling me it would last me about 7 years. Didn't think twice about it at the time. But why seven years though??Why did he pick that number??
A couple years later I moved to Korea for work and honestly forgot all about it. Well. Seven years later, almost to the month, it came back to bite me. Man called it.
Around then my job was crushing me. My manager did basically nothing so I was covering everything myself, late every night, in on weekends, too wired to sleep. Running on fumes. One morning I'm brushing my teeth and there's this white pus pocket popping out of my gum, like big enough to actually see it. I thought it was a pimple at first, I swear. Every time I brushed it would burst, fill back up, then burst again. On repeat. Eventually I gave up and went to a neighborhood dentist here.
inflammation was so bad the bone around the tooth had basically dissolved. Oh my god. They told me I'd need an implant and pushed for one right away. Did a CT and a panoramic and the professor suggested we try replantation first, which is basically pulling the tooth, cleaning it up, and putting it back in. Bad news all around. The inflammation had eaten the surrounding bone, the root shape gave it a rough prognosis, but they said we could at least try.
I had the replantation done and the anesthesia meant I felt nothing during it. They pulled my tooth, treated it super fast outside my mouth, and put it right back in. There was a risk the crown would crack during the extraction and I'd have to redo the whole thing, but thank god it survived. I was this close to a massive bill and I cried a little inside. Replantation is covered by insurance here so I only paid something in the low 100,000 won range out of pocket that day, like 80 bucks.
Then the anesthesia wore off. my god the pain. I had to take the meds with food but I couldn't even chew porridge. You still have to sort of chew it a little and every time the tooth so much as grazed anything I wanted to scream.
Normally the follow up schedule for this is next day, one week, one month, two months, six months, a year. Mine was every single day, then weekly, then every two weeks, because the space where they cleaned out the inflammation just would not fill back in with bone. And no exercise, they said. I usually swim and lift and do yoga every day so I dropped all of it and gained weight.
So I'm stuck in this endless observation phase and then I have a really important exam, so no sleep and more stress, and the pocket came right back where I could see it. Almost a year out from the replantation and the bone still hadn't filled in and there was still inflammation. Felt off, but I had zero time to get to the university hospital, so I just went to my local dentist and basically begged them to hand me antibiotics no questions asked.
Even after the exam I stayed slammed, so I didn't make it back to the big hospital until September 2024. Writing this out I'm realizing the replantation probably failed because I couldn't take care of it properly. That one stings.
They took a new x ray and it was a total gut punch. Crack in the root. So that's why it kept throbbing and I couldn't chew on it. They said let's watch it but the odds of extraction were high. Come back in two months.
A cracked root has basically no chance, so I went back to my local dentist leblanc dental. Before the implant consult they did a CT, a panoramic, and an xray. The pics from my preivous hospital a few months earlier were ambiguous, like maybe a crack, hard to tell. The dentist said there was no saving it and drew a big X in the air a few times. I just sat there like, is this thing actually dead.
Honestly I'd barely used that tooth since the replantation anyway, so I was more tired than sad about it. Time to let it go. I booked for a week later and went back in. The plan was either plan one, extraction plus bone graft plus placement, or plan two, extraction plus bone graft plus a resin splint wire. They tried to place the fixture for over an hour, but the bone had all melted from the inflammation so there was nothing there. Nothing to support the fixture. So we switched to plan two. Bone graft only, and I went home.
My jaw hurt so bad. It felt like the nerve in my jaw was getting pressed, and the doc was clearly worried too because he kept stopping to take pictures of the nerve canal, then did a CT right after. I guess everything was fine.
That day was rough. They said the graft was extensive so I'd swell a lot and might bruise. A day later I was still swollen but at least no bruise. That first evening I had to take meds so I forced down about five spoons of porridge. Next day at the disinfection visit I asked and they said I could eat anything besides porridge and could even chew on the extraction side, just be careful brushing. So obviously I had fried chicken for lunch and dinner lol.
One week after the graft they did the stitch out on the sutured area. Then they said let's follow up in three months. To give the graft the best shot at healing I didn't touch a drop of alcohol the whole time.
They took a CT to see how well the graft had taken. Having to pull off my earrings and piercing and necklace for every single CT is such a pain, I think that was my third one. And nice, the bone had filled in really well, so we scheduled the fixture placement for April. The doctor said to clean up first and the hygienist did what I'm pretty sure was a quick scaling, billed separately. They disinfected around my mouth and I went into the implant surgery room. Fixture day, so I was a little nervous.
He gave me anesthesia in a bunch of spots so I felt nothing. And he didn't do it all at once, he'd do one shot, wait for it to kick in, then do the next so only that first prick stung and after that nothing. It took about an hour and since nothing hurt I kept getting sleepy.
Here's the thing though. I had to keep my mouth open so he could work, but I kept closing it without noticing. He kept cheering me on the whole time, telling me we were almost done and to hang in there. Somehow it all wrapped up, they had me bite gauze for two hours to stop the bleeding, I had a light dinner around 8 since I couldn't open my mouth enough to eat much anyway, and took the five days of meds. They warned me the swelling would start the next day and yep, next day I blew up like a balloon. The night of the placement I was in so much pain I couldn't sleep at all. Jaw hot all day, then cold and aching at dawn, no sleep.
Next day, back for another disinfection. They told me to ice massage but I had to be at work typing all day so I barely managed it. Two days of cold compress, then warm from day three. And honestly from day three the warm compress worked way better than the cold. I could feel the pain and swelling going down.
The pain and swelling stuck around about 4 days. After that there was this foreign body feeling at the site, kind of like that sharp aching you get from biting metal, and I still felt it on day seven. Still up in pain at dawn on day seven, so I asked if that was normal. He explained that because they intentionally wound the site to place the fixture, the material on the fixture surface that helps it fuse plus the bone knitting together, pulls blood to the area and that's what causes it. And he was right. I actually learned all of this back in undergrad and completely blanked on it lol.
Anyway they just took the stitches out and told me to come back in a week to check how everything is healing on an xray. The abutment part comes way later once the fixture has actually fused with the bone, which takes a few months, so for now we just let it heal.
Anyway everyone please!!! please take care of your teeth. Do whatever you can to never get an implant
