tell me how you wanna be portrayed now

the dumbest and coolest thing i’ve ever done is to choose mt washington to be my first camping/hiking/backpacking trip and the second coolest and definitely less dumb is to choose my first solo trip to be franconia ridge!!

hi! i’m sorry to hear you’re dealing with the same thing, dental stuff can be so scary! truly i was so anxious i could barely function even thinking about it but i’m 2 months out and totally fine!

i had the free gingival graft on teeth 24 and 25, using my palate as the donor site. so they used tissue from the roof of my mouth to graft onto the gumline on those bottom teeth. it makes healing longer and a bit more painful because you essentially have two healing areas of your mouth, but i felt best about using my own tissue after talking w my dentist!

the procedure wasn’t super pleasant but was bearable (as are most dental procedures i think lol) — i had a TON of Novocain and was entirely numb for the entire thing so i could really only feel the sensation of pressure at some points. the worst part was taking the tissue from the donor site (palate) but that only took a minute or two! none of it hurt!!

the recovery was the worst part, mostly because i was an absolute anxious wreck and was so scared of messing it up! i wasnt given a ton of instructions so was texting my dentist office and looking up reddit advice 😭 and texting my poor mother and girlfriend literally 24/7. i was so worried i would accidentally dislodge it or mess it up that i elongated each stage of recovery by at least a week — so i didnt have any soft food for 2 weeks (just liquid), no solid food for 4 weeks, no alcohol or exercise for 3 weeks.

it hurt the worst the first week but looking back it was manageable if unpleasant. again most of my pain was just my own anxiety! if you follow instructions and are careful you should be 100% fine, for me it is so worth the peace of mine and protecting my dental health longterm! now i brush SO gently 🫡