Could you pull your own tooth out when sailing?

[Nostrodamus]

I am a total wimp when it comes to pain but sometimes things need to be done.

The other day we were sailing on a 320 mile passage when my tooth just needed to be pulled out.
I got out the pliers, mole grips and a mirror and then realised I had used them 2 days before to unblock the heads.
I needed to pull the tooth but could you do it?

(There are some photos on the link below)

[Flying Pancakes]

It'd depend on how painful it was and I'd need Dutch courage for sure! You can't have been in the dog house for a change then or I'm sure you would've had offers?

[Saleen411]

Well done Mark!. Excellent blog....very well written and VERY funny.

LOSING things in Greece....glad it all worked out in the end.

[charliehows]

article in the Bangkok Post a few days ago - an old guy removed his own tooth by tying a string from tooth to large stone, threw the stone which yanked out the tooth - unfortunately he then apparently took quite a lot of aspirin because of the pain - aspirin also reduces the ability of blood to form clots, so he subsequently bled to death. Caveat Emptor.

[SimonV]

Your tooth sits in a socket and is held in place by the surrounding tissue . To pull a tooth do not just pull it, but gently move it about in all directions pushing and pulling the longer you take the looser it will become. Only then pop it out. If you can leave it alone and dab the tooth with oil of cloves and see a professional .

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[Nostrodamus]

Originally Posted by SimonV

Your tooth sits in a socket and is held in place by the surrounding tissue . To pull a tooth do not just pull it, but gently move it about in all directions pushing and pulling the longer you take the looser it will become. Only then pop it out. If you can leave it alone and dab the tooth with oil of cloves and see a professional .

Totally agree Simon.. it worked for me

[PangurBan]

Originally Posted by Nostrodamus

I am a total wimp when it comes to pain but sometimes things need to be done.



The other day we were sailing on a 320 mile passage when my tooth just needed to be pulled out.

I got out the pliers, mole grips and a mirror and then realised I had used them 2 days before to unblock the heads.

I needed to pull the tooth but could you do it?



(There are some photos on the link below)

It would be interesting to get the views of a dentist on this. As a retired surgeon, here are my thoughts. Presumably the only thing that could force one to perform a diy tooth extraction would be severe pain. Since such pain is usually caused by an abscess the pain could be relieved by taking large doses of a broad spectrum antibiotic plus metranidazole ('Flagyl') to hit any gram neg bacteria. Then head for the nearest port and find a dentist. My worries would be: 1) breaking the tooth which would leave the infected root in place and no relief of the pain. 2) releasing a shower of bacteria into the bloodstream with danger of septicaemia.
If I ever set off on a lengthy cruise my medical kit is going to include plenty of ampicillin and metranidazole. By the way you cannot consume alcohol when taking the latter.
I could be wrong about all the above, but let's hear from the dentists!


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[AlwaysFORSAIL]

This seems to be a moot point. If you are writing this post then you likely have survived the removal. You aren't the first to perform minor surgery/extraction and won't be the last. My best advice would have been plenty of disinfectant- alcohol is my preferred disinfectant/pain medicine and it is never to late to administer it.

[sailorboy1]

I believe the correct tested method is to use an ice skate and rock to remove problem tooth.

[roverhi]

There is pulling teeth and then there is pulling teeth. Recently had two teeth pulled by a dentist. One was a tooth that I loosened biting into a piece of bone in a hamburger. Hoped it would heal itself but no such luck. Dentist pulled it easily with almost no effort. 2nd tooth was a mollar with a cracked root. Eveen though the tooth and surrounding tissue were infected and it hurt like hell, it had grown attached to me and didn't want to leave. Dentist had to get his largest vice grips out and bend, twist, and crank on it with all his weight and force for a long time before it finally came loose.

The first tooth I could have pulled easily. The second one, no way. Be sure that your medical kit has plenty of anti biotics to take care of infection and mild pain relievers for tooth issues and head to the nearest port if you can't live with it till you get to your planned destination.

[captain58sailin]

I have seen extractions performed by a taunted bully in a bar, of course one can never be sure if the right tooth will be removed.

[zengirl]

Originally Posted by Nostrodamus

Totally agree Simon.. it worked for me

I did the same with help from Capt. Morgan!

[SniperSailor]

Originally Posted by charliehows

article in the Bangkok Post a few days ago - an old guy removed his own tooth by tying a string from tooth to large stone, threw the stone which yanked out the tooth - unfortunately he then apparently took quite a lot of aspirin because of the pain - aspirin also reduces the ability of blood to form clots, so he subsequently bled to death. Caveat Emptor.

This could be a real lifesaver in emergency situations: YOu'll have to cut and paste the link but its worth the effort.

finance.yahoo.com/video/gel-stops-bleeding-instantly-184200092.html

--------------------------------------------


Youwould be amazed at what youi can do in a tight situation:

Tragedy and triumph: Author Aron Ralston cut off his arm to save his life
You think you’re having a bad day?

Maybe. Or maybe not.

“Any day that you don’t have to drink your own urine to survive is a good day,” said Aron Ralston, mountaineer, author, speaker and survivor.

“It’s all relative.”

Then add cutting off your own arm to survive, like Ralston also did.

Arguably, these are the actions of someone who’s earned the right to talk about relativity.

In 2003, the world was gripped by Ralston’s true-life story, the story of a then-27-year-old man who cut off his own right arm to free himself from an 800-pound rock that had fallen on his arm, trapping him for six days between the deep red walls of a tiny slot canyon the width of his shoulders.

When he finally emerged from that canyon, dehydrated, 40 pounds lighter, having lost far too much blood, he was, he said “within an hour of death.”

But he didn’t die and on Tuesday, the now internationally known speaker and book author (Between a Rock and a Hard Place) was in Bishop on tour.

He didn’t mince words about the 127 hours he spent trapped in Blue John Canyon in the deep red rock country of southeastern Utah.

“The bottom of a lot canyon is a very intimate place,” he said. “I was about 100 feet down, in a canyon about three feet wide, seven miles away from my car, and 30 miles from the nearest paved road. The sky wasn’t even visible, all that I could see was the light bouncing off 100-million-year-old sandstone.”

When he set loose an 800-pound boulder that was wedged between the two walls of the canyon, causing it to pin his right arm between the boulder and canyon wall, he knew he was in deep, deep trouble.

“Up until that moment, the most extreme pain I’d ever felt in my life was when I smashed my fingers in the door when I was a child,” he said. “That pain became a zero compared to this. And the pain—with every beat of my heart, boom, boom, boom.”

Ralston’s right hand and forearm, three inches thick, were compressed into a space one inch thick, under a boulder that weighed six times as much as he did.

He was trapped.

“I was screaming, I was totally freaked out,” he said. “I cursed, I yelled.”

Then he stopped.

“I got it that I had to settle down or I was dead,” he said. “I knew the pain wouldn’t kill me, but my response to it would. Dehydration would, infection would, hypothermia would. I was a mechanical engineer, I was trained to figure out options.”

He spent the next many hours trying everything he could to move that boulder; using his climbing ropes, his webbing to make slings, trying to figure out a way to move it. It didn’t. He chipped at the stone with his dull multi-tool knife, getting an inch of rock removed in 15 hours. He would die before that worked.

“I knew right away that one option was to cut off my arm and on the third day, I tried. But when I hit bone, the knife wouldn’t go through. I was stuck.”

He was on what was supposed to be a simple hike that spring day in April, doing a loop between two canyons, using his bike and truck as a shuttle.

He was a young dude, going alone, going solo as he loved to do, and for one of the very first times, no one knew where he was, only that he might be in Utah. He had changed plans at the last minute after a previous trip was called off and when he did so, there was no cell service to carry home a message.

Now, at the bottom of the remote slot canyon, a place where only a few people a month might visit, he began to prepare for death. He had brought a video camera, and recorded his last will and testament. He spoke to his mother, his father, his beloved sister Sophie, telling them how much he loved them.

“Mom, Dad,” he said, “I love you I am so sorry, I was just looking for adventure, trying to prove something to my self and now, I’m going to die.”

He had a revelation and recorded it, too.

“I created all of this, maybe I wanted to find out what I am made of. Maybe I wanted to know if I would give up, or would I resurrect. I didn’t know. But I wanted to.”

He drank the last of his water slowly, he ate the last of his food, he shivered convulsively through the cold, nine-hour nights, standing up the whole time, pinned to the wall like a butterfly, wings clipped. Whenever he almost fell asleep, the pain woke him up.

Then he had another revelation.

“It’s not what you do in life, it’s what you are. It’s about love, about who you love, about being loved.”

He hadn’t known that before. He was accomplished, he had graduated with two degrees at the top of his class from Carnegie Mellon University and retired at the age of 27; he had climbed mountains and descended canyons most people couldn’t get to.

He didn’t so much find religion down in that canyon as he found himself.

“I knew, then, we are all connected. We are all manifestations of the same energy of the universe and the energy is love. It was the most amazing thing I have ever felt.”

He still thought it very likely he was going to die, but down there, deep in that canyon, talking to his family through that video camera, thanking them, standing on his grave, as he said Tuesday, he was smiling.

“The will to love was stronger than the will to live,” he said. “It pulled me through moment after horrific moment.”

On the fifth day, though, he gave up.

“I surrendered. I’d been trapped for 120 hours. I knew I wasn’t going to make it through that night.”

He carved a rough epitaph in the stone; the date, his name.

It was April 30, 2003.

At midnight, he was still alive. The epitaph was wrong. It bugged his precise mind, but he decided to let it go.

Then something happened that changed everything.

“I saw myself step away from that boulder and go down a hallway and at the end of it was a little boy and I bent down and picked him up with my one hand and he said “Daddy, I am glad you are home, let’s play.’

“And we danced and danced.

“That little boy changed everything. I knew I was going to get out.”

In the morning of the sixth day, the light bulb struck, a solution he later would say his mechanical engineer’s mind should had thought of sooner.

“I couldn’t cut through the bone in my arm, but I could break it,” he said.

So he did, leveraging the arm against the rock, snapping it.

Well, maybe it wasn’t that simple.

“I forgot there are two bones in the arm,” he said.

In the Charles Brown Auditorium, the mesmerized audience gasped audibly. Some left the room.

“So I broke that one too,” he said. He cut through the remaining flesh and left his forearm and hand trapped beneath the boulder. It was, he said, horrific and beautiful all at once.

“When it was done, just for one moment, I knew what life was like without limitations. I was going to get out. I was free. I was free.”

He put a tourniquet above his elbow, and put the stump of his arm into his bladderbag from his pack.

The euphoria faded and he knew time was tight—very tight.

“I was going to bleed to death if I didn’t get out soon, even with the tourniquet,” he said.

He still had to get out of the slot canyon, rappel down a 60-foot drop, then hike the seven miles to his vehicle. The odds were not good.
He set off.

At the bottom of the rappel, he found a pool of water and drank and drank and drank.

He hiked.

Two hours … three hours … four. The exhaustion, the loss of blood; he knew then, several miles from his car and many hours from medical help, that he wasn’t going to make it.

Then he saw something.

“A family,” he said. “I saw a family.”

Then he saw a helicopter, waiting ahead in a wide spot in the canyon.

His mother, his sister, his father, all of Utah’s backcountry rangers and sheriffs and feds, had found him.

“I had an hour to live,” he said. “If I had cut off my arm any sooner, like I had tried to, no one would have been looking for me yet, (although Ralston was gone six days, he was only 24 hours overdue to work which is what triggered the massive search that started his fifth day out) and I would never had have made it to my car. If I hadn’t, they were already getting ready to leave. It was an incredible amount of synchronicity.”

Later … years later … when his first son was born, he and his wife Jessica named the blond, blue-eyed boy that he had seen in his vision, Leo.

“For the courage he gave me that night when I first met him nine years ago,” he said.

“All of us have our boulders,” he said. “They can be medical, they can be financial, they can be emotional. I wouldn’t change this for anything. It has made my life what it is, rich beyond imagining. When I left that arm behind, I didn’t lose anything. Now, today, I give back, I give my time to do search and rescue, I travel. I speak like this, to give back.

“Our boulders can be out blessings,” he said. “That is what I am trying to say, to show. It’s up to us to decide which.”
- See more at: http://www.mammothtimes.com/content/....jXvAkE1h.dpuf

[mariner-dovb]

Hello, This is a very difficult topic. In general it is not possible to draw ones own tooth without anesthesia. Even when the thooth is almost loose, it will hurt in a very horrible way. Maybe this string and throwing stone method will work only, when the tooth ist very loose.
With anesthesia it is complete different. Using an ordinary pliers you will more likely break the tooth than getting it out. A set of screwdrivers is a better tool. Using the method of ->SimonV would also break the tooth with a nonexperienced person. Of course it is best to get the help of dentist. Only when this is not possible at all, and You are really desperate, You may try it this way:
1) Anesthesia. Without it it will be really horrible.
2) You clean Your tools and sterilise ist(Pressure cooker).
3) You push a small screwdriver (1mm) into the gap between bone and root of tooth and move it gently.
4) You take a sligthly larger screwdriver (2mm) and coninue in the same way. You will notice the tooth will become more loose by and by. Time is also of importance and will work for you. Keep Your patience!
5) Finally a 3mm screwdriver will loosen the tooth, so You can take it out by Your hand.

This is the very basic way for an easy extraction. However, there are some theeth with two ore more roots, it is almost impossible to succeed for an unexperienced person. Maybe Antibiotka (->PangurBan) will help for some time.
Maybe for this and for sewing cuts You should include a dentists anethesia (Without vasoconstrictor!) in Your medical box.
An older colleague told me, he was the only dentist in a russian POW camp of WWII with several 10thousend imprisioned german soldiers, his only tool was a screwdriver, and he managed though.
greetings mariner

[jheldatksuedu]

I've been looking for a rather permanent filling material, I've got zinc oxide eugenol for a temporary and pain relief, but need something to follow it that is more permanent. I've experimented with a few things, super glue and baking soda makes an interesting instant concrete like cement, but not sure the mouth can stand the instant and intense heat from the acid base reaction. It sure makes a quick grabbing cement in certain situations. I don't think I want to mess with mercury amalgam.