Hey! Where is the other implant?

Today was a big day for me. I went back down to Johns Hopkins to see my doctors for follow up. The first appointment was with Dr B, my plastic surgeon. We have a running joke between each other. He never knows what to expect when he opens the door to the patients waiting room. (Will I swell? Will I be fine?) So, he opens the door very slowly and peeks his head in. It always makes me laugh. I always tell him that I love seeing him but not this much. Anyway, after the examination he gave me a clean bill of health. No issues to report inside my mouth. I did bring up again the lack of lip movement on the right. It has gotten a little better over the past 1 1/2 months. He stated that was a good sign. Give it time. He also brought up again that if I am not happy with how I look cosmetically that he can help me with that. But that would be in the future. Now I don't have to see him for another 6 months. HUZZAH!


I then went to see Dr R. He is on the oral surgeon team. I normally see Dr S. but he was not in that day. Today, in what I thought was just a follow up appointment turned out to be much more. He informed me that he would be making an incision over the implant fixture or screw that were implanted back in November and place the dental abutment or studs over them. This would make me one step closer to getting my new teeth. Now I knew I lost one implant when Dr B took out the titanium plate last month. Fine, no problem as I have three left. Or so I thought. After the Doctor put in the first stud, he had a hard time finding the other two. He had me take a panoramic x-ray. (Why did he not do this before hand was beyond me.) Upon examination of the x-ray he made two very interesting discoveries. The first was that bone had grown over one of my implants. Bone? This implant was the closest to my original jaw. Guess my bone did not like that there was a whole in new bone and decided to cover it up? Crazy, but that was the easy part. The hard part was the second discover. There was no other implant. WHAT?



As you can see from the x-ray there are only two implants. One to the left you can see the stud over the implant screw. To the right there is the screw that is covered with what looks to be bone. No other implant screw. Where did the other one go? Could Dr B not know he took out two screws or did it just slip his mind? Regardless, I can not get my implants done. Doctor said that he would need to place another implant screw in. So that would require more oral surgery. Great, it would be the 5th in over a year. He stitches me up taking out the stud that was placed in the back screw, worrying that it would get an infection, good idea with my track record. He stitched me up and gave me pain killers and antibiotics. So all this was for nothing. Again I ask myself why did you not take the stupid x-ray before hand. Whatever.

I will be talking to Dr S, my regular doctor tomorrow to go over this. I need to understand what happened. So, as you can understand, I was very pissed. Not to forget I was now in pain. So help me if I get an infection.