TKR If it can go wrong...: emergency dental work & cat scratch

[kneeidea63]

One of my biggest worries about the surgery was waking up from a general anaesthetic minus my front teeth. I have dental implants and due to a very bad teeth grinding habit I’d broken one of the fitting screws, and now there was only one loose screw holding everything in place, and it was definitely on it’s way out. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and if I’d known it would take so long to get surgery I’d have had them fixed earlier in the year.
Nevertheless, I’ve managed to keep the teeth going on a very gentle diet, until last week, 16 days before my surgery! So, we are giving up on the implants and my dentist is trying to do a rush job on a denture. It won’t be the best fit, so I’ve been a bit worried about damage to the inside of my mouth delaying surgery, is this an issue, does anyone know?
10 days to go and I seemed to have things under control; support equipment arriving on Wednesday, Cryo-cuff ordered, bedroom paintwork refreshed (it keeps my mind off the op) until this evening when one of our kittens caught my finger with a claw and punctured the skin. I cleaned the cut up and I’ll talk to pre-op staff tomorrow, but I’m worried sick this is going to delay the op, and it’ll be postponed until after Christmas. Has anyone got any experience of this?

 

[Pumpkin]

kneeidea63
Best people to ask are your surgeon and dentist.
With your dentist making a denture, vs an invasive procedure, you should be OK.

Sorry you are facing theses challenges so close to your surgery.

 

[kneeidea63]

Thanks Pumpkin. I spoke to the assessment unit and they won’t cancel immediately; I have to monitor the cut and talk to them on Monday(2 days before surgery), giving it time to heal.
The visit to the dentist went well, they’ve decided to do a denture without wire, so no risk of cuts in my mouth.
Fingers crossed there are no other unexpected incidents.

 

[lovetocookandsew]

Just a piece of advice in regards to your denture. I have partials and asked my dentist about them and surgery. He recommended I leave them at home for the surgery and hospital stay. He said he's seen many, many people take them to the hospital for after surgery and/or hospital stays that have lost them in the process. The chance of losing them was not worth it to me so I left them home for the week I was in the hospital. Mine were custom made for me and the last thing I wanted to do was to go through all the fittings again, not to mention paying for them again. My insurance covered a big chunk of the cost the first time around, and we paid the difference, which was still not cheap, but they will only cover them once every five years, and I would have had to pay the entire cost if they were to be lost. No thanks.

 

[kneeidea63]

Thanks for the advice, Kim. As it turned out the denture didn’t arrive on time so I was in and out of hospital before it appeared. I had my surgery as a “toothless crone”, but decided I could live with that.
I came out of hospital exactly two weeks ago. All went well; I had the spinal I wanted, out in under 3 days, and have just had my clips removed this afternoon.
Lessons learnt from last time are being applied in hope of a more relaxed recovery.

 

[Celle]

kneeidea now has a recovery thread, here:
https://bonesmart.org/forum/threads/kneeidea63s-tkr-recovery-thread.58103/

Please follow her progress there.