Gum graft

Today, I had my gum graft. I've postponed several times because of visitors and other things, though probably in the back of my mind I was dodging the inevitable - I was not looking forward to it. I have receding gums (I think it might run in the family) and the gums around my lower front teeth are particularly bad. My periodontist said that if I didn't have the graft the teeth would eventually fall out, so that motivated me into doing it.

I was awake for the whole thing this time (I had a general anaesthetic for my wisdom teeth). It lasted about 45 minutes and was a little uncomfortable throughout, but no pain. They removed a piece of tissue from the roof of my mouth, and then attached it over my lower front gum area.

The rest of the day has been spent ice-packing my face to reduce the swelling. I did get some useful stuff done too - I managed to create a DVD from a load of camcorder movies I have of my family. I like my new Mac - it's fast enough to do cool stuff :) Eating is quite difficult, because I have hard dressings over the donor site and the graft, so I can't actually close my teeth completely to bite. I am staring down the barrel of another exciting week of eating soup and feeling really hungry. Looking forward to it. Still no pain yet though, so it's not all bad. Oh yes, and it cost nearly C$1800 dollars! I hope my dental plan will cough up...