So, I had a bit of an “interesting” dental experience. Apparently, my dentist cut an artery in my mouth while removing the two lower wisdom teeth. This -of course- caused a bit of an event. A few bloody photos to follow, don’t click if you’re haemophilic.
Everything started not this most recent Wednesday, but the one previous to it, when I went in for the extraction. The procedure seemed to go smoothly, and as I left the dental office everything was all smiles. The surgical site seemed to be bleeding rather heavily (i.e. the I have to keep swallowing my own blood kind of heavy). However, the bleeding seemed to subside and be healing well, at least that night and the next day.
The status on Thursday.
The drama struck Friday night, when the lower left hand side began bleeding quite profusely around 10 PM. After the bleeding kept up quite strongly for about thirty minutes, having to swallow to spit out a mouthful of my own blood about at least once or twice a minute, I decided that I probably needed to head over to the hospital – especially as I have a vitamin K deficiency (which means that blood takes a lot longer to clot than it normally would, or to put it colloquially: I’m a “bleeder”). So, it was off to the hospital, filling up a mason jar and a half of fresh blood in the process.
Shortly after the bleeding began on Friday night, before the filling of mason jars.
Probably the worst thing about the mouthfuls of blood was that the blood would start to coagulate inside my mouth, even as it was gushing out. So, I have a mass of blood in my mouth, which began to form solid strands, and congeal into a sort of rubbery mass This mass would then cut off my airway – meaning I had to spit it out so as not to choke. Of course, spitting it out left room for yet more blood to spurt out, and the process repeated itself infinitely.
Hospital emergency wards are also very busy places. So, lucky me, I got to enjoy this wonderful feeling of bleeding out and choking on my own blood from about 11 PM Friday night, until 1:30-2 AM Saturday morning, when a doctor could be spared to see me. Bundles of joy, I assure you.
It took another four hours to finally come on a solution to stop the bleeding. It was a type of cellulose patch (in medical terms, a haemostat), that was able to seal off the wound. Along the way, of course, the process took a lot of pain, a few failed attempts, two IVs, and a narcotic ten times more powerful than morphine (called dilaudid) to get through. According to the doctor, the haemostat cost around $400.00 CAD, which makes me very happy to have Canada’s public healthcare system at my back. Departing the hospital at around 5 AM, I thought everything was finally taken care of, and I that I could just relax and heal.
After the haemostat.
However, the story wasn’t over just yet. Having slept through Saturday afternoon and evening, I woke up on Sunday and was happy to note that I wasn’t bleeding. This good trend continued for all of a few hours, before promptly reversing itself, and the wound began bleeding at the same rate it had been on Friday night.
Cue a tired sigh at this point of the story. A bit weary, I decided it would be good to visit the emergency on-call dentist (who hand’t been available Friday night). So, another blood filled drive to medical professionals ensued.
When the on-call dentist took a look, he was quickly able to discern what had happened: my dentist had “gone too far/deep” when he removed my lower left wisdom tooth, and had cut an artery – which was now gushing blood. He decided the best course of action would be to re-suture the wound, and try and get the artery closed off. So, he removed the old stitches, and proceeded to do so. Let me tell you, the feeling of blood literally shooting up in a stream from one side of your mouth to the other -like a fountain- is not something comforting. However, he was able to successfully close it off, and I could finally relax (unless, as he warned, it started bleeding again – in which case I need to go have emergency surgery by an oral surgeon, while sedated).
Finally, something that will hold.
It’s now a week later, and it seems like everything is melding back together quite nicely. Still a bit tender, but healing quite nicely (a week and a half without solid food was rather difficult as well). Yay. This better not happen again.
Update: (Aug. 5, 2010) Seems to be all healed up. Woohoo!
All healed!