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The Consultation, cry baby, I want my teeth

June 30, 2015 By Bukola Oriola

This is the third part of a four-part article about my experience with oral surgery. In case you missed the first part and second parts, you can read them first, Dental Death Sentence and The teeth cleaning, chopping, sharpening tools, scary experience.

I thought my appointment will be to take the teeth out and be over with it. Little did I know that it was just a consultation session. I had been told to come with my insurance card, photo identification, and disc with my dental referral. I was checked in at my appointment and when I got on the dental bed, I was made to watch a video about dental surgery. The video showed the patient what to expect during such a complicated procedure. And, it was scary.

When the dental surgeon finally came in, he said, “Well, I need an approval from your insurance to take out one of the teeth. “Arrrggg! Approval?” I thought to myself, “This nightmare is not about to end any time soon.” I asked how long it would take for the insurance to give an approval. He said, “It could take up to three weeks, but the good news is that, that is less than how long the teeth had been there.” Then I asked if I could take my disc back but he said no. I also asked about having my teeth once extracted. He said, “Well, I don’t have problem giving you your teeth but I may not be the one that will do the extraction when you come in, so it depends on the doctor.” I prayed in my head, “God let whoever the doctor is give me my teeth back.”

I went home waiting for a call but nothing happened for another couple of months. Then, I started noticing pains on my neck, my right ear, plus, it seemed like one side of my head was not function well. I felt continuous burning around the teeth and it was just uncomfortable. I took ibuprofen several times a day. At some point, I called the insurance company and I was asked to tell the clinic to send my request in so that it can be expedited. I did. Still, nothing happened for another two months.

While I was complaining to one of my grandmas in church, Annette, she said, “You have to squeak the wheel, so call them and let them know you are in pain.” Well, I kept calling for several days, and at last, I was scheduled to go to the urgent clinic. Grandma Annette and her husband, grandpa Jim took me to the appointment.

Continue with the story soon in part four entitled, The Surgery: Wasn’t as bad as I thought.

Thanks for reading. I hope to talk to you again through my blogs. If you have questions, comments or suggestions, please, send me a note – fill out the contact form. I want to hear from you. You can also get my recent posts by signing up to receive updates.

Bye for now, until next time.

PS: Have you checked out my blogger page yet? If you have not, you can check it out here. There I share everything that I am connected with in one place; hence, the name of the page, All Things Bukola Oriola.

The teeth cleaning, chopping, sharpening tools, scary experience

June 29, 2015 By Bukola Oriola

This is the second part of a four-part article about my experience with oral surgery. In case you missed the first part, you can read first, it is entitled, Dental Death Sentence.

The end of this session felt like volcanic eruption in my mouth. However, I must say that my hygienist welcomed me with a smile when I arrived at my teeth cleaning session. However, little did I know that it will be a session that will be almost an hour long. More so, it was a traumatic experience. I don’t remember if she asked me to take off my earrings, however, I asked if I could leave my sunglasses on. Luckily, I had pink eye when I went in. I was not afraid or guilty of going to the clinic with pink eye because I assumed the clinic is the safest place to go with any kind of disease or infection.

Well, lying on my back on the dental bed, the hygienist did not waste time to get to work. She wore her goggles, gloves and took a sit beside my head to get down to work. First, she started using some sharp metal tools to go between the teeth. Then, she came up with more metal tools digging in, and scrapping. She constantly used the suction to get rid of the saliva and blood that oozed out of my mouth. Mind you, she had on a mask too.

She sharpened her tools several times. I was cold dead on that bed. In fact, I don’t know how I managed not to pass out on the bed. It was my first personal visit with a dental hygienist. I had taken my son for dental cleaning several times and never saw them sharpening the tools, so I thought that my teeth must have seen some horrible days to have to go through such rigorous cleaning.

I felt bad as I saw the amount of work this woman had to do on me. I kept apologizing for coming to do over thirty years of work in one day. Trust me. That was how it felt. She said to me, “Don’t worry, I am from Mexico. We don’t go to the dentist except we feel pain, so I understand.” I felt a little relieved hoping that by her statement, she wasn’t feeling upset inside that I was one of those difficult jobs she had to do. At the end of the cleaning, she asked me to make another appointment for a second cleaning. “Second cleaning?” I thought to myself. My teeth felt like I had sands or small stones as I try to close my jaw. “This nightmare is not about to end anytime soon,” I panicked.

Before she let me go, she also took an x-tray. This time, the x-tray was not just biting a piece of gadget. It was getting under a piece of equipment that went over my whole head to take a picture of all my teeth for better view. It’s called Panoramic X-ray. While she was doing it, she put a sign out on the corridor that said, “Stay off. Radiation.” And, I thought to myself, “This is getting more serious and scary. Radiation?” She also suggested that I should go to the surgeon to have my decayed teeth removed.

I made another appointment to come back at the front desk and left for home. Then I call the University of Minnesota Oral and Maxillofacial to make an appointment. Although, that was not my first call, I had called before but was told that I had to call back the following month. And this was already the following month, so I made sure to call them at 8:00 a.m. just as they were opening up their lines to patients. I was scheduled to come in a month after.

Continue with the story soon in part three entitled, The consultation, cry baby, I want my teeth.

Bye for now, until next time.

Dental Death Sentence

June 28, 2015 By Bukola Oriola

When I was diagnosed to have teeth and not just tooth extraction, it was like receiving a death sentence. I had gone for physical and at my appointment, I had told my doctor that I was having tooth ache. She referred me to the dental clinic. At the dental appointment, the female dentist examined my teeth and told me that one of my wisdom teeth did not grow well and that it had affected the tooth beside it. She said the only option was extraction of both teeth. Worse still, she was not competent enough to do such a complicated extraction.

The extraction was a complicated one because the wisdom tooth had fully grown and now sitting on a nerve in my jaw. She said that I would have to make an appointment with the University of Minnesota Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeon to have both extracted. I told her that I didn’t want any of my teeth extracted and asked if there was no other option than losing two teeth at the same time. Her response was not favorable. She prescribed some antibiotics and analgesic, sending me home to go decided on what I wanted to do.

This was about a year ago. I took my medicines and the pain subsided. I was praying hard to get healed. I kept telling myself, “I don’t want to lose my teeth.” I told some friends and a friend opened her mouth to show me how her gum is now looking like that of a baby yet to teeth after a tooth had been extracted. Then she added, “I am fine now and happy. I don’t care there is no tooth there because I don’t feel pain anymore.” Rather than convincing me, my fear grew worse. In fact, I can still see her “baby-like” gum as I write this piece.

In November of last year I returned to the dentist office. This time, I had a male dentist attended to me. He repeated the same diagnosis I had. In fact, before the doctor came in, the nurse who checked me in was surprised that I still had the teeth in my mouth after her examination. An x-tray had been taken, then, the doctor explained what was in the x-tray. He said, he couldn’t extract the teeth too. I had to go to a surgeon to get it out because, “The wisdom tooth is sitting on a nerve.” The he continued by aggravating my fear by saying, “If I try to do it, you could lose all your teeth and your lips.” Pointing to something that looked like a white line on the black and white picture, he said, “This nerve controls your teeth and lips, taking the wisdom teeth out improperly can damage your whole teeth and lips, so you need to see a surgeon who specializes in taking out such complicated tooth.”

At that point, I knew my faith was nowhere to be found. It was not little. It was lost. At that point too, I was already suffering from such a bath breath that I inconvenient people around me. So, he ordered a teeth cleaning session with the hygienist. I made an appointment and went in for my teeth cleaning.

Continue with the story soon in part two entitled, The Teeth Cleaning, Chopping, sharpening tools, scary experience.

Bye for now, until next time.

Another Taste for Hope Fundraiser

June 1, 2015 By Bukola Oriola

It seemed like it was only yesterday that we had The Enitan Story’s 1st Annual Fundraiser event. The event name, Taste for Hope came about with the help of our former board secretary Emily Wise.

I remembered sitting in her office one after in May or June after we had received the tax exempt determination letter of the organization from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). As we were talking about how to raise money for the organization to provide services to victims and survivors of human trafficking and domestic abuse, she said, I used to attend an event where they just provide little items for tasting. It is usually filled with vendors and we can do the same.”

I thought that was a creative idea, so I opted in. Then we began to think of a name. We went through a list of fundraising names that we could remember and bam! Taste for Hope appeared like the shinning star in the sky.

One more thing, we were excited but we still need to bring it to the board for approval. Luckily, the board agreed and we started working hard to put the event together.

I must confess that it was not as easy as I thought it was going to be. Organizing a fundraising event can be daunting if you don’t know how to go about it.

Last year, it was a lot of leg work. However, we have learned from our past and we are doing things slightly different this year. We will see how it turned out at the end.

I hope that you can join us for the 2nd Annual Taste for Hope Fundraiser. You can get your ticket online or offline. To buy an individual or group ticket online, please go to The Enitan Story’s ticket page.

We are adding more food vendors to the the list. Last year, the guests tasted over 10 different kinds of food from three of the four regions of the world. So, don’t miss it, get your tickets now.

Bye for now, until next time.

I did it…. You can too

May 31, 2015 By Bukola Oriola

Have you been in a situation where you are wondering whether you should do something or not? Perhaps, it’s as simple as eating a particular meal, applying for a job, taking a trip, starting a business, or going sky diving. Well. whatever it may be, no matter how simple or hard it may be, you can do it.

I just finally set up a Public Figure page for myself on facebook today. This is an idea that I had negotiated several times whether to do it or not to do it. You may wonder, “So, what made you do it?” Well, in part, Facebook compelled me to take this step when it automatically created a Public Figure page for me using wikipedia information. I found out when I created a facebook page for Bringing The Story Back Home in February.

Then, I thought I may as well take the step by creating a Public Figure page to be able to communicate directly with those who want to reach out to me directly. Also, that will give me the opportunity to do this separate of my facebook “personal” page, where many may not be able to reach me.

Did I take the step right away? No! I did not. It took me about three months to finally make the decision. First, I tried to claim the Facebook generated Public Page but could not, so I left it alone and just created my own.

Whether you are a survivor, a business person, author, artist, or someone who wants to offer something to the public as yourself, I will encourage you to create a Public Figure page. That way, you may be able to share information about yourself, work, products, or anything you support. Plus, that will be you commenting directly, rather than someone else making things up in your name.

You are welcome to connect with my on Bukola Oriola Public Figure page on Facebook.

Bye for now, until next time.

The Consultation, cry baby, I want my teeth

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The teeth cleaning, chopping, sharpening tools, scary experience

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Dental Death Sentence

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Another Taste for Hope Fundraiser

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I did it…. You can too

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