It Takes Courage…

Waiting for Dr. Wagner, the prosthedontist

[Shannon here]  Carrie passed a couple of milestones in the last two days:

1.  Under sedation, Dr. Traub removed all the nasty old iodoform packing from her wound site and removed her stitches.

2. Carrie faced her panic and fears and learned how to remove and replace her obturator.

These steps may seem small, but they were daunting and very scary.  The packing has been inside her scooped out jaw and palate since Aug 18, when she had her surgery.  It was permeated with antibiotic material and flavored Carrie’s every bite of food.   After a week of this, the flavoring was further enhanced by the very old blood, mucous, and ?? leaking out from the obturator.   (Imagine eating a savory soup flavored with polysporin and the minute debris of 10 days of food decaying in your mouth, and you get the idea of the experience.)

The removal of the obturator happened at Dr. Wagner’s office, the doctor who makes these amazing prosthetic teeth cum palate devices.  Since the surgery, Carrie’s tissues have shrunk a bit and so Dr. Wagner needed to check the fit and make adjustments.  He told Carrie, “Now, you can’t leave here without being able to remove and replace the obturator because you need to take it out 3 times per day to keep it clean.”

Obturator removed, showing how upper mouth sags where teeth and jaw were removed

It takes losing part of your palate to realize just how dependent you are on it to swallow and talk.  Without a palate, there is no ability to suck or to form words as we learned from toddler age.  The first time Dr. Wagner removed the obturator, Carrie felt a real panic because she couldn’t swallow.  But she pushed past her fears and put the blag-dag thing back in on her own!!!

I think that is raging raw courage.

The surgery site is still somewhat tender and raw-feeling, so eating and obturator removal is done delicately.  It will take another couple of months to fully heal, during which time Carrie will be visiting Dr. Wagner frequently for adjustments.

There is the question of whether Carrie will choose to have reconstructive surgery done in a year’s time.  If she gets comfortable enough with the obturator routine, and if she prefers not to go through another possibly more painful operation (involving the jaw again and removal of bone from her hip for a bone graft), then she could conceivably just live with what she has.  Time will tell.

Carrie inserting obturator for the first time!

Oh, and by the way:  No sign of tumor cells per her pathology report.  Hooray!!!!!