Crazy day!

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Thursdays are always busy right now with soccer season in full swing (all three of the kids playing soccer usually have practice or a game this day), but this day was even more busy than usual.  My Visiting Teachers came over this morning so I spent some time this morning cleaning.  They came and left and then I took MJ and Kay to a neighbor's house so I could go to the dentist (oh what fun!).  It was just a routine cleaning, but I needed the dentist to take a closer look at my mouth so we can keep an eye on any problems and watch out for osteoneucrosis of the jaw (which is a potential side effect of the Avastin treatment that I am on).   So I had to explain the cancer that I have and the treatments that I am under for that.  After I was through there (and thankfully no problems were seen) I went back and picked up the girls and then we came home for some lunch.

 Just after M&M got home from school the power went out in the house.  I had just been trying to make some reservations online to get the older kids in some swimming lessons when everything went dead. At first M&M thought it might be someone pulling a prank on us (the power switch to the house is pretty easily accessible) so I went outside to check the power and it was still in the on position. I then went downstairs to the storage room and checked the circuit breakers and they were all in the on position as well. We looked around a little outside, but how can you tell if your neighbors have power or not during the middle of a sunny day?  I ended up calling DH at work and had him do some looking online for me.  He found through our power company's website that there were some power outages in our area and the cause was unknown.  The estimated time for the power to return was around 7:30 p.m. - it went off around 3:30.  When the elementary school kids got home they said that the power had been out at school as well.  Around 5:00 I went out to the garage to see if I could figure out how to open the garage door so I could get the car out when the light in there turned on and I realized that the power had finally come back on!  Yea! 

Luke got himself ready for soccer practice and got a ride with a friend.  Then I prepared dinner and just when I was finishing the preparations, DH came home from work just in time to take M&M to practice and then stop on the way home to pick up Luke and a friend from practice and bring them home (Blondie had her practice on Wednesday this week).  While he was gone I fed dinner to the younger kids and then DH and Luke ate when they got home.  I then piled MJ and Kay into the car to go with me to pick up M&M from her practice.  We got there a few minutes before the practice ended so I let them play on the playground while we waited.

 We arrived home just as Luke was finishing up his shower.  M&M sat down to have some dinner and I heard Luke downstairs calling for me.  I made my way down there and was about to walk over to the bathroom when I realized that the laundry room floor was completely covered in water.  Luke was calling to me from the bathroom trying to tell me that his pajamas and clothes that had been on the floor in the bathroom while he showered were now completely wet.  I was just standing there trying to figure out what to do and where the water was coming from. There is a second door from the bathroom that leads into Luke's bedroom so I told him to go through that door to his room to get some dry clothes and I ran upstairs looking for DH.  Well, DH was in the bathroom upstairs so I told him that there was some water flooding downstairs and I needed his help when he was through.  I didn't wait for a response and quickly ran back downstairs to try and figure out what was going on.  I grabbed the mop and started mopping up the water in the laundry room and wringing it out into a bucket. I called Blondie over to come and help me while I grabbed a second mop.  I had M&M run upstairs for some towels to dry off some things that had been sitting on the laundry room floor.  Finally I had mopped up enough water that I could make it to the bathroom and opened the door to see the damage in there. The floor and rugs were completely soaked in there. I then opened up the shower door (it is a shower with no bathtub) and there was several inches of standing water just sitting there in the shower - the water was not draining out of the drain at all... I grabbed the toilet plunger and started plunging where the drain was until I was able to get the water to start slowly draining. I then called to Luke and asked him why he continued showering with the water not draining. His response was that he just figured the shower door would hold the water in... (...and then what happens when you open the door with half a foot of standing water being held in by the door????)   Not one of his more brilliant moments...  So all of the flooding was caused by our son showering and the drain being completely stopped up.  After I got the water drained out of the shower I had Luke bring me a screwdriver and I removed the drain cover so I could clean out the drain.  I also noticed that the sink drain wasn't working too well so I cleaned that out while I was at it. In the meantime Blondie and Kitty were mopping for me and I kept wondering why my husband wasn't coming down to help and see what the problem was.  So I went upstairs and found him laying down on our bed with some pretty severe stomach cramps.  Apparently he told me that after I came and found him in the bathroom, but I must have left the room already because I didn't hear him say that. Luckily the floor there in the bathroom and laundry room is tile and none of the water made it to the bedroom or family room carpet so there wasn't any damage done.  And apparently the low point in those two rooms is the laundry room by the washer and dryer.  While we were trying to clean up the water MJ kept trying to play with the water in the bucket and then once I found her sitting in the middle of the laundry room floor trying to play in the water!  Oh what fun she can be at times!

Finally the end of the implant saga!!

DH finally got his artificial tooth cemented onto his implant yesterday! We have finally come to the end of what has turned out to be an 8 month ordeal!!

DH had the screw for the implant put in last June and has been dealing with a temporary tooth attached to a retainer (called a flipper) ever since then. Several months into wearing it he was on a bike ride with some friends, bit down on a granola bar and snapped the tooth off of the flipper. DH typically took the tooth out to eat because his bottom teeth would hit it otherwise. He thought he would be okay this one time because it was just a small granola bar and he was biting down with his back teeth. Unfortunately, the granola bar was really hard and he broke it. Needless to say he was not a very happy camper when that happened. So ever since then he has been super gluing the tooth back onto the flipper and it would last anywhere from 1 day to a week or two depending on how well he was able to attach it. A couple of smaller pieces have broken off here and there and also been glued on (amazingly I found a small piece in the bathtub before I took a shower one day).

Unfortunately with it being the front tooth, everything has been a little more critical than when I had my implant done several years ago. We were waiting for the new year to get the final tooth done so that the insurance would pay for some of it. So DH went to the oral surgeon the first week of January and got the clear to go ahead with the permanent tooth. Then DH went to the dentist to have some impressions done and actually drove over to the dental lab that would be doing the tooth so they could take some more pictures and make sure they got the color just right. Then they told DH it would be about 3 weeks to get the tooth made.

DH had an appointment on January 31 to have the final tooth put in. He went in that morning and came home with no tooth! They put the tooth in at the office and had to scrape it down in the back because his lower tooth kept hitting it. They kept whittling down at it until they broke through the tooth! The dentist told DH that it should be an easy fix and they would send it back to the dental lab and have it back in a day or two. He was also told that they might end up having to file down a little of his bottom tooth to prevent it from hitting the implant. Well, DH got a call the next day saying it was going to take longer than they initially thought so an appointment was made for Wednesday, February 9th.

They then called back and asked if they could push it back another day, which DH couldn't because he was attending a conference in Salt Lake and had to present at it on Friday. DH was hoping to get the new tooth before the conference, but it didn't happen.

So the appointment was made for Monday (yesterday). DH went in and it turns out that they had to make a whole new tooth (which didn't make the dental lab guy too happy). They tried it on to make sure the fit was right before they cemented it on and luckily they didn't have to file down his bottom tooth at all. I think the tooth looks great and now DH is just trying to get used to it since it's been 8 months since he's had a tooth there!!

Little things

* Having a quick and relatively pain free dentist appointment. I was gone from my home for less than an hour! I was the only patient there when I first arrived and I think there was only one other person there when I left.

* My dad watching my three youngest kids while I was at the dentist. The dentist and his assistant thought I was crazy for asking my dad to watch them for me - especially a 4 month old. I never even thought twice about asking him because he loves kids and does great with them. Kay especially loves it when Bacca comes over. Normally my mom would have come instead of him or with him but she had a concert that morning.

* MJ sleeping the whole time I was gone.

* M&M getting Kitty ready for her dance pictures while I was at a rehearsal on Saturday. She got her all dressed and even fixed and curled her hair!

* Online shopping! I am loving it this year!

* Helping the Bear scouts make tool boxes. Yesterday we finished putting the screws in, sanded the boxes and started painting them. We will finish them up next week.

The tale of a tooth

It all started about 2 months ago when DH went in for a regular cleaning at the dentist's office. They discovered that there was some decay going on in one of his front teeth and so they scheduled a filling for the following week. So DH went in for what was supposed to be just a filling and when the dentist started drilling into the tooth he discovered that this was not normal decay that was going on, but something called external resorption. This means basically that the body is attacking the tooth and trying to reabsorb it. It can be caused by some type of trauma to the tooth or if the teeth are moved too quickly during orthodontic procedures - and it can take up to 20 or more years for the trauma to be discovered. At this point the dentist told DH that there was nothing that he could do for the tooth and that he recommended having the tooth pulled and an implant put in ASAP. The dentist put a temporary filling into the tooth and then sent him on his way. Needless to say, DH was not too happy when he came home from that appointment. (Incidentally, I had noticed some discoloration in that tooth lately, but didn't think anything of it other than normal color change of the teeth.)

After he got home he started doing some research on the internet and we decided to set up a consultation with the oral surgeon who did my implant 4 years ago. The worst part about all of this has been that it is one of DH's top front teeth. Anywhere else in the mouth and the consequences of this diagnosis wouldn't have been quite as bad or such a hard decision to make. Through the research that DH did, he found that there really is no good solution to this problem other than pulling the tooth. Sometimes there are procedures that can be done to prolong the tooth, but ultimately it will need to be pulled or it will fall out on its own - and possibly begin to affect the surrounding bone and teeth.

DH met with the oral surgeon and he said that DH was a good candidate for an implant and that they have changed how they do things from a few years ago. At this point there was some disagreement between the oral surgeon and the dentist as to what to replace the tooth with temporarily - either a flipper (retainer with a tooth attached) or just a temporary crown. The oral surgeon was pushing the temporary crown, but the dentist was pushing the flipper. After doing some research, DH finally decided on the flipper because he knows some people that have done the temporary crown and have had the implant fail because they put too much load on the implant before it was ready. With this being DH's front tooth, he didn't trust himself with not accidentally biting down on it. The problem with both of these solutions though is that it is just temporary until the implant is ready for the permanent crown, and our insurance won't cover either of them. So we also decided at this point to put off the surgery as long as possible since the tooth wasn't bothering DH at all and who knows how long he has been living with it without even knowing about it. Plus, if we put off the permanent crown until January, then we can get the insurance to cover more of the total procedure.

So we put decided to put off the implant procedure until August. DH was doing just fine until about 2 weeks ago when he started having some pain around the tooth area and we discovered that he had an infection. He called the dentist and was put on an antibiotic, scheduled an appointment to have an impression done of his teeth for the flipper and rescheduled the implant date for last Thursday. I think that when the dentist drilled into the tooth trying to fix what he thought was a cavity, it helped to further the decay along and expose the tooth to a higher risk of infection. Luckily the antibiotics worked great and the infection quickly went away and stayed away until he had the surgery done last week.

Wednesday evening we had an early birthday dinner for DH since he wouldn't be up to eating much on his birthday which was 2 days after his surgery. Thursday afternoon I went with DH to the oral surgeon and less than an hour later we were on our way home again - with an implant and a flipper instead of a front tooth. The oral surgeon had someone from one of the implant companies there observing the procedure, and she was quite impressed with the surgeon's work and kept commenting and complimenting him throughout the procedure. The surgeon did find some bone deformation after he pulled the tooth, indicating that the infection was starting to affect the bone around the tooth as well.

Before picture
So now it's on to life without a front tooth. DH has been healing great and only tooth pain medication for the first couple of days. The gum still has stitches in it and is still healing, but DH hasn't had any complications with it so far and he looks and talks normally with the flipper in place. Unfortunately, the way his teeth are aligned in his mouth, he is not able to eat with the flipper in and has to pull it out whenever he wants to eat something. When he takes the flipper out, it completely changes how he looks and he talks with a lisp. And we are still planning on waiting until January to get the permanent crown - which means 7 months of life with a flipper...
After picture (with the flipper in)
After picture (without the flipper)