Well, well, well.  A lovely side effect of my dental implant surgery is that my minor (but irritating!) brain fog has disappeared, and I hope for good.

 

Was it the laughing gas, the oxygen, the surgery itself or all three that created this small miracle?

 

I dunno, but I’m very grateful.

 

So, I did a little research.

 

Turns out oxygen is the likely cause of the disappearance of my minor brain fog. There are reputable oxygen therapies for people with brain fog and traumatic brain injuries.

 

Now that I’ve solved that mystery, I’ll give you a update on the dental implant.

 

I’m feeling back to normal and I can smile again without the smile looking overly weird. (See images below. Not quite back up to par, but getting there!)

 

I still have a wee bit of bruising on the right side of my face, but it’s covering a smaller area, fading now, and only in three spots.

 

The upper edges of my upper lip are still bruised and look black.

 

Here are a couple pix I took just now, one wearing my glasses and one without:

 

 

Not bad, huh?!  Just a bruise under my right eye, along the “smile crease” next to my nose, and beside my lips. You can also barely see the black on my upper lip in a few places.

 

Dental implant surgery is characterized as “controlled trauma.”  It’s oral surgery, so it impacts more than just the implant site, especially if you’re on blood thinners, as I am. It’s a delicate procedure that doesn’t feel very delicate when you’re all numbed up and feeling the pressure (but none of the pain) that the dentist is exerting to implant the element to which the abutment and crown will later be attached. My dentist also inserted additional bone grafting material into the spot and elsewhere nearby, so that required additional pressure and “trauma” to the areas in which that occurred.

 

But, as you can see, within days the swelling and bruising begin to reverse and, at least for me, the only pain occurred as the numbing agents wore off and I was waiting for the pharmacist to fill the prescriptions (belatedly) that the dentist was supposed to have sent them HOURS in advance so there would be no gap between the numbness wearing off and the administering of pain medication. (I took a Tylenol in the interim and that kept my pain level at about a 4 on a scale of one to ten. I never did need the opioid prescription the dentist ordered. I just stayed with Tylenol for three doses, and after that I was fine. Sore, but not in what I consider pain. But everyone is different!)

 

Read yesterday’s blog post on what I learned about dental implant surgery after the fact as a result of my personal experience with it. I listed some good pointers there!