The attorney will come later. I just need to get myself better. Yesterday I started with a little cough and now I have just woken up in the middle of the night finding it hard to breathe. My chest feels heavy and it feels like there is fluid in there, kind of like when I have bronchitis. I have a terrible taste in my mouth also. My chest is burning. Can I get pneumonia from this? This is starting to really scare me. I may be heading to the ER soon.

Angels,

I cannot personally vouch for the attorney that Cleo provided you the name of, but I would ask you to consider contacting him with your situation and see what he advises you to do.

Dental problems affect our overall health, not just our oral health. You continue to have one physical ailment after another which you feel, and you may be right, that they are connected to your dental problems. You have also been subjected to a lot of radiation in a short amount of time which also affects your overall health. If the infection is still brewing in the area of the dental implant or any of the surrounding area, sinuses, etc., antibiotics are not going to cure that infection. In fact, they will lower your resistance even further. The problem needs to be diagnosed and treated properly and it has become very obvious that the first oral surgeon is not going to explore this any further.

In your recent post you stated, and I believe for the first time, that the ENT had referred you to the second oral surgeon. Those were the ones who needed to collaborate on your case. If you did ask and they didn't seem interested, you needed to insist upon it. It is not too late to do that. However, keep in mind that because you kept going back to the original oral surgeon and because you let him go ahead with the implant ... it is not going to be easy to get any dentist or ENT on board because of the liability concerns to undue or correct what has already taken place. But you cannot keep going on like this so it may behoove you to try and communicate with that ENT.

I also want to point out that medical doctors, even those in the ER are not going to know if your current situation is oral health related or not. They are taught next to nothing about teeth and oral health related problems. They will likely prescribe an antibiotic and send you on your way.

When you speak to the ENT and to the referred oral surgeon, do not mention the possibility of speaking to an attorney. That will scare them away. However, it may behoove you to contact that attorney and consult with him about your case.

Bryanna

I went to the referred oral surgeon. He didn't really do anything except look at my ct scan, feel the outside, told me he was friends with the first oral surgeon and send me on my way. He was no help whatsoever. Today I did go to the ER. I felt like death, was running a fever and worried I might go septic, the ER doc did exactly as you said, gave me antibiotics and sent me on my way. No blood test, but he offered to do a ct scan, I refused and told him I wanted an MRI but apparently they don't do that on weekends. He gave me an antibiotic shot. I have been coughing a lot, but he said my lungs are clear. This was at San Diegos best hospital. One more question, would they be able to take out the implant and the two bone grafts, clean it out real good and then redo it?I do have a call into the ENT to get an MRI. But of coarse, they never called back. I am really at a loss of what to do, I am ready to give up.

I can vouch for any dentist who went on to practice LAW. Contacting one isn't always about malpractice. It's mostly about being sent to oral surgeons who have seen the worst cases... If they need your records the lawyer will request them from ALL docs involved. Going to Mayo across the globe will be as useless as the ER visit! It's your choice

I've been nerve damaged for many of years to have heard it all

So this guy could give me a referral? I just want to get this fixed. I feel like I am dying.

Cleo,

You can vouch for ANY dentist that went on to practice law? How is that? I know of some dentists/lawyers and would be hard pressed to trust them. I don't know about the one you mentioned, that's why I asked how you knew of him.

I do agree that contacting one is not an automatic lawsuit by any means.
I also agree that going to the Mayo clinic would most likely not be all that helpful or worth the trip.

Bryanna

Angels,

Then perhaps you should have asked the ENT for a different referral? Which you still can do. You need to understand the reluctance of a doctor who is not real thrilled about running repetitive scans on you especially if he knows the problem is evident on what he has already taken.

So another antibiotic with no diagnosis. This is unfortunately mainstream medicine, irrelevant of the reputation of the hospital, which is about as helpful as a brick when it comes to dental problems.

The CT scans that you have had done, were they 2D or 3D scans? It is imperative to have a 3D scan because it much more diagnostic than a 2D. Before you go and have another one or another MRI, check to see specifically which type of scan they were. If they were 3D scans, then you have had enough scans to diagnose the problem and I would urge you to NOT keep getting them. Radiation exposure to your head, especially in a short amount of time, is a very serious and can be an irreversible health hazard.

An oral surgeon can remove the implant and remove as much bone grafting as possible. This surgery may involve the sinus. Sometimes the oral surgeon performs the implant and graft removal and the ENT performs the sinus surgery. This is often done simultaneously. It is important to NOT assume that the oral problem is not connected to a sinus issue. The connection needs to be ruled out with positivity prior to removing the implant if at all possible. This is where the 3D scan comes into play at it will show all of those anatomical areas in multi dimensions.

If you contact the attorney that Cleo provided, do not assume you are filing a law suit. I think it would be worth the consult to see how this guy could help you get beyond where you are at now.

Bryanna

Hi Bryanna,
Is the panoramic xray a 3D xray? They have done so many scans and can't find anything. This is definitely tied to the left side of my face and I KNOW it is from my teeth, I can feel it. The whole time I have had a bitter taste coming from that area and they are saying there is no way it is coming from there because it is all healed. I do feel a little better today as I don't have the fever anymore. I do think that shot helped a little. But I have drainage and sticky mucus all on the left side. It is making me cough. My left ear is ringing constantly. The ct scan is what the ENT was looking at and he said that it looked like there are roots in my sinus but when I told him that I had a bone graft he said it was the grafting material then. The oral surgeon is adamate that nothing looks wrong. I do need to call and let him know what is going on. I felt like I had an infection since I had the implant put in. When I had the Last MRI it caught the infection in tooth number 15 when the CT scans were not. The last maxofacial MRI scan I had was before #15 was removed. That is where I feel the problem is. The MRI is safe, or at least safer than a ct. I hate doing them but it will be worth it if something shows up.
I feel like people are probably reading this and saying maybe this lady is a nut! But this is real and I think I am a normal person! (I guess ask my husband! Lol) I can take a lot of pain. But this is ridiculous after a year and 7 months. Someone needs to figure it out. Nobody should have to live like this. One of the best days of my life will be when someone figures it out. I keep hoping.

Angels,

The panoramic is 2D, 2 dimensional radio-graph. It does not show the detail like a 3D, 3-dimensional CT image. The alveolar ridge (bone that contains the root sockets) and the sinus area can be a bit skewed depending on the density of the patients bone and the position of the patients head when the xray was taken. Was your oral surgeon relying on panoramic xrays for the diagnosis?

How many actual THREE D CAT SCANS have you had? How many PANORAMIC xrays have you had and how many MRI's have you had?

Your ongoing symptoms indicate something is wrong ... and there is no reason for anyone to think you are making it up. Also, let me reiterate that your complications are NOT unusual for someone who had upper root canaled teeth removed and had a history of infection and sinus problems. Those teeth were causing havoc to occur in that bone and in the sinus for God knows how long before you actually had developed obvious symptoms or before the problems were diagnosed.

The findings on the CT by the ENT dr need to be further evaluated. Bone graft material should not resemble root tips unless the periodontal ligaments were not removed when the teeth were extracted. If the ligaments were not removed, then the ligaments would hold the graft material as if it was sitting in a cup and the cup would be in the shape of the root tips. This is not ideal because the ligaments are now dead tissue which could easily be harboring infectious bacteria. It is imperative to remove the periodontal ligaments in their entirety after the teeth are extracted to minimize post operative complications such as chronic infection and spread of infection.

Periodontal ligaments are live fibrous tissue that serve a few purposes but they are mainly there to protect each tooth and act like a rubber band around the circumference of the roots of each tooth to give it some flexibility. These ligaments also help supply the tooth with nutrition via the blood vessels. Once a tooth is extracted, the ligament looses all vitality and is nothing more than necrotic tissue that no longer serves any beneficial purpose.

The periodontal ligament can be compared to the after birth (placenta) in a pregnant woman. The placenta serves to protect and nourish the baby. Once the baby is born, the placenta serves no beneficial purpose and needs to come out or complications will occur.

All dentists are taught the importance of removing the periodontal ligaments at the time of a tooth extraction. They all know what can happen if the ligament is not removed. However, some dentists are either sloppy in the removal or they just don't bother removing it. Some dentists think the body will just miraculously absorb the ligament, which does not happen. Imagine an obstetrician being sloppy about removing a placenta or just leaving it in the women's uterus?!! As a noteworthy side ... when complications occur due to not removing the periodontal ligaments, those dentists who leave the ligament usually don't like to admit that they did that because it's a red flag that the job was incomplete. To make matters worse, their peers are reluctant to mention the ligament issue to the patient because they don't want to step on anyone's toes, they don't want the patient to go back to the dentist and be told something to the contrary or they just believe that that information should come from the dentist who did the surgery. When an ENT and an oral surgeon or 2 oral surgeons collaborate on a case, this is one of the issues they discuss without the patient being present.

The antibiotic injection that you had has likely reduced the inflammation and brought down the fever. This is not a cure, but it is a temporary relief... thank goodness for that!

Please consider what your next moves should be before you start making phone calls. Yes, you need to inform the oral surgeon who did the implants of the problems you are having so he notes them in your chart. If you don't inform him, he can say (at a later date) that you were content with the implant surgery because you didn't report having any further problems. However, I would hesitate to let him do anything further. I would not make light of what has been transpiring. When we feel relief, we tend to minimize what we've been through. Also let him know that you are deeply concerned about the ongoing symptoms and upset that you had to have more antibiotics. Let him know how you feel about this medication being a band ade and the actual cure for whatever is causing the symptoms.

You have to be careful how you present your words and emotions when you speak to any professional involved in this case. The last thing you want to be accused of is being overly dramatic or needy yet you seem content with the treatment that has been rendered to you. Do you understand what I mean by that?

Bryanna




Bryanna