I can scarcely believe that it’s been 10 months since my last post. So much has been happening in my life and not in a good way either. I have not only moved house but I have moved into another area, outside of London where I lived these past 11 years. We have moved into a 523 year old house, on what must be the busiest road in the entire UK – We had no idea that it is the only route to towns and villages west of us and the noise is constant and incessant. Because the house is a grade II listed building, one is not allowed to put in new windows or double-glazing and so there is no way of blocking the noise. Fortunately it is a rental and so I am frantically looking for a house to purchase and this task is proving to be near impossible. We don’t know a soul in the area and it’s about a 5 hour round trip into London served by a very erratic train operator who cancels trains at the drop of the hat. However, this is not the source of my woes – of course it’s the ongoing saga of my sorry teeth and mouth. To go into the details of it all is simply too exhausting , both for the reader and for me . Let me try to put it in a nutshell and say that when I finally received the surgery to remove both teeth, do a bone graft and put in a temporary bridge, the entire process was a complete and unmitigated disaster that left me with a paralysed lip, upper lip and bridge of the nose caused by nerve damage. From start to finish the whole experience was a series of complete incompetence, apathy at best as I was passed from one specialist to another ( I say specialist advisedly ) as they all decided that they didn’t want to undertake what was required , eventually referring me to a colleague whom I was assured was highly qualified and professional and was prepared to accept me as a patient. The operation required my lip being cut into so that it could be pulled upwards and peeled back so that he was able to enter the site from above, adjacent to the nasal area. He removed such a large cyst ( hence all the pain I have been suffering for nearly 2 years – the fact that it took this long to get to removed truly beggars belief – all that was done was I kept being given antibiotics and in a 6 month period I was given them 7 times!! For this I blame my trusted dentist . Needless to say that I no longer have the same faith in him. ) The dentist removing the cyst was so adamant that he needed to get all of it out that he completely butchered the area thus damaging the nerve. He also left a hole where one of the stitches was placed. Added to this has been a constant drip from my left nostril over which I have no control.
Cutting a long story short, this team of so called professionals of course would never admit culpability although when he was doing the operation he did say to me that a Maxillofacial-facial surgeon should have been doing the surgery – how comforting that was to hear this!! Instead of just stitching me up and referring me at that point, he carried on hacking away and causing untold damage. This was 8 months ago. I still have no feeling in the areas I mentioned and not only that but I have had constant nerve pain every single day since the procedure. Apparently this is caused by wiring in the brain after the nerve was damaged and disrupted my neurotransmitters that have gone awry and are mis-functioning. I obviously will never return to that practice after what happened and am in the process of requesting a refund at the very least. Good luck to me on that front because they will never admit their incompetence, so we shall have to see….
However, in the meanwhile, I have been consulting with a wonderful Maxillofacial surgeon and the difference in his whole approach has been from dark to light. I’ve had several consultations and CT scans and it was apparent that the infection was never fully cleared and I needed to have revision surgery in an attempt to undo all the wrong caused in the first place. Apparently every medical person should know that to place bone grafts in an area that had been so infected is simply not good practice and would always be guaranteed to fail. This is exactly what happened in my case and so my surgeon had to operate again to remove all the infected bone and tissue, clean out the whole area and inject my own plasma in an attempt to facilitate healing. All of this was done in a hospital theatre, with several nurses assisting and with post operative care next to none. So I am once again sitting with stitches and swelling , pain and discomfort but at least this time I have some hope that I will heal. The nerve damage may be permanent – if it doesn’t improve or repair within 2 years, I will be left with it. Added to this is the fact that I will have to have another 2 procedures about 6 months apart before we can even think of placing implants for permanent teeth. Not only has this cost me a small fortune but it has also cost me precious time and robbed me of my smile.
Of course this leaves my weight issues lying in the dust and this is still an ongoing problem. The fact that it’s problematic every time I eat anything merely compounds the issue. It’s not an excuse – it’s merely my reality .
It’s hard to rise above it – especially when in constant pain. It’s also hard to be positive when the odds have been so heavily stacked against me. There have been times when I have played the victim and felt sorry for myself but this leads nowhere. I’ve had some really dark days but I am still here, still fighting and still hoping that there will be an end to this nightmare and sunnier times ahead.
Bring it on!
