Open Wide and Say "Huh?"

It all started in August at my regular semi-annual dental cleaning when the dentist pulled out the bite wing x-rays from my January visit and pointed to a smudge that only he could see and said, "There's a cyst here in your gumline that you should get looked at. Here's a referral. It's probably nothing, but they should biopsy it, just in case."

So I called and tried to figure out how to go about doing this and went through a huge rigamarole with my insurance and finally threw my hands in the air and, well, forgot about it for a while. Then in October, I remembered it again and went ahead and scheduled a consultation that I figured I'd just pay for myself in order to have it done with. At the consultation, she could see the smudge in the bite wings, but didn't see anything in the panoramic that they took but poked around a bit and based on the bite wings said they should go ahead and do a biopsy but that 99.9% of the time it's nothing to worry about.

With the weird insurance issue and the fact that our insurance was changing in the new year (and thus removing the issue in the first place) I asked if we could wait til January and she agreed that it would be fine to so.

So, this morning I got up and took myself to the oral surgeon. I was offered a flavor choice for the topical numbing agent and, having experienced the disgustingness that is "pina colada" flavored dental anything, I opted for mint. She then proceeded to stab me with five needles full of numby-goodness, and I only felt three of them. Then there was much tugging and pulling and pressure and the drill noise...oh the drill noise!...and several "Hmmms" followed by periods of "Huh" followed by pursed lips and furrowed brows.

Apparently whatever it is that was in the bite wing is not actually in my mouth. Now, it's possible that it just went away - she said something called an aneurysmal bone cyst can do that. Of course, we don't know that's what it is (was?) because there's nothing there. I get to go back in 3 months for them to poke around (I'm crossing my fingers for that being non-surgical) to see if it has reappeared.

On the other hand, my sister-in-law shares both my dentist and my name. They've had her chart, not mine, twice when I've showed up for a cleaning and had to go switch them out. So, the possibility exists that I just had oral surgery based on my sister-in-law's x-ray. If that's the case, the type of pain she is just moved considerably higher in my anatomy.