I had good intentions of writing some of this post BEFORE my surgery. But that didn't happen and here we are. I have been on the struggle bus... for an eternity it seems. Most days I'd hit a point where I wished I could just fall into a slumber for as long as necessary and magically wake feeling amazing, like Sleeping Beauty. It has taken an insurmountable amount of determination to get through each day. I wish I was being dramatic, but I'm really not. I try to act as normal as possible... just kidding, what is normal? I mean I tried to be myself, but often fell short. I was exhausted, irritable, and my brain was definitely not firing on all cylinders. A few weeks ago I called the dental office and asked them to please call me if anything opened up sooner than December 7th. They called December 1st and said they had an opening on the 4th and I said, "yes, please!".
Dental Cavitations: What Are They?
This may be confused with a dental cavity, which is a breakdown of your tooth. Most people have dealt with one or more of these at some point in their life. A dental cavitation (cavitational osteonecrosis) on the other hand is a hole in the jawbone due to incomplete healing from tooth loss/extraction or in some cases, a root canal. Often times, when a tooth is removed the periodontal ligament (tissue that lines the socket, anchors your tooth and acts as a shock absorber) gets left behind. This can trick the body into thinking there is still a tooth there. The bone doesn't naturally grow through the ligament to fill the socket with new bone. Sometimes when the tooth is pulled it will take some of the membrane ligament with it, so bone can grow in that area but still not a complete socket healing. This is why cavitations vary in size. Most of the time the top of the extraction site no longer has the ligament, so this allows a thin layer of bone to grow over the top gradually with time. And now there is officially a hole in your jaw. Before the bone grows over the top there has been ample time for microbe flora from your mouth to get nice and comfy in there. Once enclosed there's no way to get it back to a sterile state. So now we have bacteria trapped in an environment without oxygen. Over time these once benign bacteria now become pathogenic/toxic without access to oxygen. Once the toxins accumulate enough it can activate the immune system via mouth-body connection. Oral health has downstream effects to many other systems in the body. Even though the bacteria is in this cavitation site, it finds ways to travel through bone spaces, along nerve sheaths, within the lymph system, and make its way into your bloodstream. And I'm sure you know where this is going... it can lead to a wide variety of health issues. It can also block your body's energy meridians. All of your teeth are on different
energy meridians, it's quite fascinating!
The hard part is that there can be a lack of warning signs. Or the signs aren't obvious in a way that makes you think it's an oral health issue. Some symptoms that can be present are: mild to severe oral discomfort, phantom tooth pain, migraines and headaches, extreme fatigue, chronic sinusitis, and facial nerve pain. Or possibly just any unexplained health issues that you can't seem to link to a root cause. There is a more symptomatic type of cavitation called a neuralgia-inducing cavitation osteonecrosis (NICO) lesion. This reaches the main nerve in the jawbone and can cause more pain and systemic inflammation in the body. They are able to test the tissue inside the cavitation. Some samples have shown high levels of inflammatory messengers. These messengers have also been found in patients with breast cancer and people with chronic illnesses.
Dental Cavitations: How Did I Find Them?
As most of my readers already know, I've been struggling with health issues for many years. This past August I had a really rough go with some abdominal issues. After many medical tests I was still left without answers. I honestly felt so defeated. Several months prior my mom had told me about
thermography imaging. I found it to be really interesting, but didn't pursue it at that time. Well it now seemed as good a time as ever, so I did it. Long story short, my functional medicine doctor took a look at the report and asked if I'd ever been scanned for cavitations. I had never heard of them before. He noted the inflammation that led from the back of my jaw down my lymph system on both sides. Also around my mouth and right sinus. He suggested I get a 3D Cone Beam scan done just to see. And if there was nothing there, then at least I knew I could rule it out. Since I had my wisdom teeth removed as a teenager, it was at least a possibility I had them. He also shared a podcast they had recently done in which a
woman shared her story about cavitations. After the call I looked up
biological dentists in MN just to see what my options were. And then I tabled the matter to think about later, because it just felt like another big (expensive) hurdle.
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| Right side of my face |
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| Left side of my face |
Fast forward a few weeks after that appointment, my mom had sent me a reel about someone dealing with dental cavitations and how it impacted their health. And I was like hmm, weird, my doctor was just telling me about this. So I was like ugh, FINE, I'll look into it more. Right after I saw the reel I went back to find the podcast I mentioned above and gave it a listen. There were a few lights that went off as I listened. One thing that jumped out to me was her experience with facial acne. I had a strange bout of really bad acne that didn't start until I was about 19. It was just really odd because as a teenager I didn't have too many issues, but then it turned quickly. After a few years I finally found something to get it to clear up so I had kind of forgotten about it. Was this related to my wisdom teeth removal? Maybe! I also thought back to how I'd have phantom pain/swelling where one of them was removed. It would bother me for awhile, go away for a few months, and return again. The tooth was gone so it was bizarre to me and I never really asked anyone about it. Anyhow, this was enough to kick me into gear to make an appointment for a scan. I reached out to
Sedation and Implant Dentistry in St. Paul. They were able to get me in relatively quick for the scan and then a consult with the dentist would follow a few weeks later. The 3D Cone Beam scan only takes a few minutes. So it's the quickest appointment! They sent me my images before my consult appointment. Mine showed that I had 3 cavitations, beyond that I had no idea what I was looking at. I guess that fourth wisdom tooth must have come out with the ligament and healed properly. The image below shows one of my cavitation sites. Cortical bone (outer layer of jaw) is 3000 HU, Cancellous bone (inner portion of jaw) is 700 HU, Fat is -84 HU, and soft tissue is -300 to -100 HU. So you can see in the sampling below how they find the cavitations and measure the density. It ranges from fat to soft tissue in the areas where my wisdom teeth were. At my consult she reviewed all of this with me and then I proceeded to schedule the surgeries. She recommended I do one side of the mouth at a time as to not overwhelm my body. This sounded very logical to me and my ailing body.
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| 3D Cone Beam Scan Image |
Dental Cavitations: The Surgery
Prior to surgery they recommended I due a nutrient IV of Vitamin C. So I went and did that at
Between the Bridges Healing Center in town. I had hopes it would give me a noticeable boost, but sadly it did not. It actually made me tired and gave me a headache. Google told me this can happen ;) Other than that I upped some of my supplements to ensure my drainage pathways were open.
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| Meyer's Cocktail IV nutrient infusion |
Once I was situated they took some of my blood to create a platelet-rich fibrin (PRF). They do a standard blood draw and put it in a Bio-PRF machine and spin it at high speeds. This will be used as a 'super' blood clot that has elevated concentrations of regenerative cells and growth factors that stimulate wound healing. After that they inject a local anesthetic in the gums by the cavitation sites. I opted for nitrous oxide as well. You have the option to be sedated or without anything additional as well. I felt like I did well with the nitrous oxide when I had Otis and this way I didn't have to worry about coming out of the sedation after. I was very chilled out and couldn't feel anything. I was still aware of what was happening and could very much hear it all. This was my interpretation: scrape away gum, drill hole into jaw, clean it out, do some fracking, inject some ozone, fill it with the PRF, and then stitch it shut. Voila, it's done! Then move on to the next site. Fun fact about having Ehler's Danlos Syndrome, we metabolize anesthetic quickly. When they moved to the bottom site I could feel it a bit, so I had them numb it more. What I described really is basically what they do. I'm not certain what the fracking portion was, maybe debriding to remove any dead bone and get to healthy bone. Or it was maybe something to do with the ozone injection. I'll have to ask at my next surgery. Each cavitation only takes about 15 minutes. So all in all, it's a very quick surgery. I had them collect some tissue from each site to be tested for what types of pathogens were hanging out in there. I should get those results back in a few weeks.
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| Getting ready to start! |
That's all for now...
Much love,
Ash
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Sources:
Hidden Epidemic by Thomas E. Levy, MD, JD
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ReplyDeleteYou captured it beautifully. Maybe the next one we can ask if I can record the procedure. It was interesting to watch it… Dr Yang and Bethany worked so well together. They didn’t even need to speak. They were so much in sync through the process.
I was comforted with the painting of the praying man with the bread hanging on the wall. Many of our parents and grandparents had this famous painting in their kitchens.
The photo /painting is called “Grace”
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