Day 0

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5 & 6

TL;DR - it's not hurting as bad, ponderings, heartburn

Woke up feeling actually pretty decent, which was a huge surprise. The gauze I fell asleep with in my mouth had all fallen out and I'd drooled like crazy, but at least the gauze was a LOT less bloody than they were the day before. Still really sore from where the dentures cut too deep. The ice packs from the previous night seemed to help a great deal. And I'm also hungry. I'm glad I ate real meals for lunch and breakfast the day before, since I'm unsure of how to deal with food now.

One funny thing I found - I have a small hang nail on one of my fingers, and I know it's a bad habit to chew on them, but I do it any way. I bring my finger to my mouth to do just that and realize I can't do that anymore. And I used my front teeth for a lot of stuff, including biting through things like receipt tag plastic (also not good) and wondered if I'd ever be able to do that again.

We had to get up early for an 8am appointment for them to see how I'm doing. I grabbed one of the yogurt smoothie things to drink from the fridge. They're tiny bottles but they're tasty and take the edge off. Once I finish, I put the last of my gauze in, just in case.

We get to Aspen, the waiting room is fairly full. Most of the people are wearing masks, including myself and my husband. The front office staff aren't wearing any though, but I think there's still enough desk between her and patients that help. We go to sit and wait. Everyone is brought back for their appointments and we continue to wait. 8:30 rolls around and we're getting impatient. I took the day off but my husband still has to work from home for the day. I finally ask the receptionist how much longer, so she went to ask for me, and they finally brought me back and got me started. Not sure what the hold up was.

We pull my dentures out, which was kind of a relief and he checked my sutures and what not. Everything was looking good and I asked for more gauze but then was reminded I wasn't really bleeding anymore, so I don't need it. Their person who makes the dentures comes in and I show her how badly the bottoms are cutting in to me. She has to go back and forth a few times, making the adjustments but we finally get a good fit. Right now the top feels fine. I complain that the bottoms won't stop floating so it was suggested that I get some of the pads (think Seabond or equivalent) to put in and it would help, but after we leave, I can't honestly remember if they said I could wear those right away or not. We do try to call later and find out but the office closes at 1pm on Fridays and won't be open again until Monday.

We stop at our Walgreens on the way back to grab cleaning tabs and the Seabond pads. Tonight would be my first night without wearing them to sleep and I'm really looking forward to it. I'm supposed to take them out every night anyways. We also stop to get me more of those yogurt smoothies and some chocolate milk, as well as some Bear Creek potato soup & cheese.

We get back home and I'm feeling good enough to maybe go play on my computer for awhile to distract myself. I'm also still hungry, so I make myself some oatmeal. It's soft enough I can just mostly just swallow it, no chewing. I tend to get it into my mouth and just kinda squish it against my top palate to kind of "chew" it and get it down. Making chewing motions hurt otherwise. I can't tell how well my molars are touching. Oatmeal keeps getting under my bottoms and it get super annoying trying to eat and food gathering under the denture. I almost thought I had some under the top but they were actually fine. After I finish eating, I go take the bottoms out to clean off the bits of oatmeal.

A couple of hours in I get super tired and end up sleeping most of the day away, dentures still in, still drooling in my sleep. But I feel better after the nap. I almost don't need another hydro, so I don't bother with it. I had back in to the back office to keep playing some video games.

7pm rolls around and my stomach is growly. First I get another yogurt smoothie and drink that down, but then realized I needed more than that - I can't keep eating/drinking only yogurt. So I got out a package of garlic mashed potatoes, added some died minced onions as well as a ton of cheese. It was delicious and I'd get those tiny chunks of the onion and I'd try to chew them with my front teeth, but again, I'm having a hard time telling if anything works. I give up and just try to get it all down. This was also after 24 hours and I can have fizzy drinks again. You have no idea how much I was excited to have a soda, and boy did it hit the spot.

After potatoes and half a small bottle of soda, I decide to try something else. Before the dentures started, I had picked up this chocolate meringue pie from a local grocery store. I normally just buy a couple of slices and I'd never looked down and seen they had whole pies <insert facepalm> I figured it would be one of those "eat what I want as long as I'm getting some kind of nutrition" and chocolate pie fell into that category. So I go and cut myself a piece of this pie, and figured even the crust would be easy to get down.

So I take my pie back to my computer and it's actually pretty smooth going. I'm trying to chew the crust some, but I can't tell if it's working or not, but I still squish it against my top palate and get it down. It was as delicious as I had hoped and I was really happy with myself that I bought a whole pie of this stuff.

I also forgot that I was supposed to swish around some warm water with salt about 4 to 6 times a day, and only got in about 2 sessions of that. I can't tell how much it actually helped but I think my mouth felt a little bit better.

I finally get tired enough for bed. I'm excited to sleep without them tonight. I get out the denture container they gave me, filled it with warm water, one of the denture cleaning tabs and add it, then my dentures. Closed it up because according to the tabs, you can just leave your dentures over night in it.

I check myself out in the mirror and it looks so weird to me, having no teeth. Over this past week, I kept running my tongue over my teeth and looking at them, trying to see if I can remember the feeling, the look of real teeth. I'm still kind of mad at myself but even more mad at a dentist that knew I couldn't have afforded his crowns for all the root canals he gave me.

I practice smiling in the mirror with no teeth and it feels weird. I can make a small smile with my mouth closed but it seems to take extra effort to make a bigger smile, because the muscles in my face no longer have a "backboard" to help slide across and up to make the bigger smile. And even my resting face looks strange, with no teeth in. My ex had dentures (got them in their 20s), and I always remembered how much better they looked with their dentures in, but because they had lived alone and no job (they took care of their grandparents) so they didn't wear their dentures terribly often and there's kind of a caved in look to one's cheeks without the teeth behind them. I'm super curious about how my face is going to flesh out, though I guess it's more like de-flesh out, down the road.

It's a relief without having my dentures in but still weird. I head to bed and fall asleep pretty fast, but then suddenly heart burn hits regurges some hot acid into the back of my throat which wakes me up coughing hard. Probably from all the dairy I'd had that day, so I need to make sure that the next night I take a heartburn pill before bed.

Thanks all for the support and taking the time to read aaaaall this blathering, just trying to get down as much of the experience I can.