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Daily writing prompt

Have you ever had surgery? What for?

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Yes, any and all surgeries I’ve ever had were oral. Either getting teeth removed or the one oral implant I have. I will say it has been quite the journey with complications and I’m happy to share.

When I was younger, I had some stubborn baby teeth. My canines did not want to come out, even when the right canine came in. I even had one tooth (I think it was a molar) that broke in half and remained when an adult tooth came in. My dentist at the time removed them by hand without numbing me. Needless to say, I was shocked, and that affected my desire to go to the dentist. On my left canine, he encountered some resistance from the tooth and ….well…me. This made him use the hurricane gel and remove it with a metal tool.

From there, it was the usual stuff. I had the occasional cavity filling, wisdom teeth removal, you know normal stuff. After a while, we started to become concerned about the left canine not coming down. They initially tried to attach a chain to it and use my braces to bring it down. That caused skull-splitting headaches, so I abandoned the attempt.

Later, when see an oral surgeon about my wisdom teeth they noticed that my body started rejecting the tooth. It was calcified and became a tumor. The surgeon didn’t think it was malignant, but he couldn’t be sure without a biopsy. He gave me two options:

• Have surgery to remove it and biopsy it. A bone graph would be done to replace the bone being removed.
• Leave it alone

Here’s the thing, I was warned that the tooth/tumor was very close to a nerve that if nicked could paralyze half of my face. The desire to have a normal smile again, and fear of the tumor being malignant won. I did the surgery, and everything worked out. The first thing I tried to do when I woke up was move my face. I was so relieved. I did find it odd that I had no pain afterward.

After some time, I scheduled the dental implant. The bone graph took and was strong enough for the procedure. That procedure also went well, but I will say ever since the implant has been installed, there are time when I feel that half of my face go numb for a few seconds to a minute.