Vanessa, This One's For You

A follow up to my post from last week about the removal of my tongue ring.

If you are easily disgusted, perhaps you’ll want to stop reading. And blame Vanessa since she thought it would be entertaining blog material.

Ok. So apparently when I was a little I had issues with the fluoride treatments at the dentist. I had no remembrance of this, but a number of years ago the hygienist was reviewing my chart and noticed that there was a note not to give me fluoride as it made me gag. Like I said, I don’t remember having problems, but apparently once upon a time I did. I do know that I had since received fluoride treatments, so I guess it was back when I was really little.

Fast forward to modern day. From time to time when brushing my teeth I will start to gag. This will then make me start dry heaving. Not a pleasant experience at all. No idea why this happens sometimes and not others. Some toothpastes make this happen more than others, but again, it’s not really consistent. Sometimes I’ll even start to gag while chewing gum. I’ll be chewing away doing just fine and then all of a sudden I’ll start to get that gag reflex. I know I must spit out that gum right away.

So this morning I’m at the dentist. One of the things he needs to do is take impressions of my mouth. Next week I’m going in to have a graft done, and they are going to give me stents to protect where they took the cells from as well as over the graft. To do this, they need to make impressions. So, the hygienist loads up the little mouth tray with alginate and puts it in my mouth. I almost immediately stat to gag and dry heave. (Even just typing this makes me want to gag!) There was an extra blob of alginate that I was practically choking on. That comes out of my mouth. I continue to dry heave. And then I throw up a little. Luckily the hygienist was very nice trying to offer suggestions to make it better, apologizing for it taking so long etc.

So finally the mold comes out of my mouth. Apparently it was not a good impression. She takes it to the Doctor for him to say if it is sufficient or not. It wasn’t. He comes back to help. He verifies that the tray is the appropriate size and shows me exactly what he’s going to do and what he wants me to do to make it less painful. He loads it up with alginate. Into my mouth it goes. He has me tip my chin down and put my legs up. Breathe through your nose. I start to gag. I throw up a little. And then somehow it gets a little better. Maybe another small gag or two. He apologizes for the alginate taking so long to set up. Then time for the lower teeth. Again he explains the process. This time I really try to concentrate on my breathing. I only drooled a little. Much better!

And I am so glad that is done! After the first one and then the second one not going well, I was about to tell them to forget about the stents. (They were optional to have anyway.) I know I had to have impressions done when I had my braces and retainers, but I don’t remember them being this bad at all!

And that is the story of my visit to the dentist. I must say though, this was my first time going to this dentist (it’s a specialist) and I was very pleased with him. He did a great job of being sympathetic to my issues and he also did a great job of explaining what I needed to have done. And while they were taking the impressions, the receptionist had figured out how best to bill insurance (I have dual insurance only through the end of the year) and found me an appointment time that would allow me to have the work done next week.