Hi, I had the surgery in mid-May. The mucocele showed up in December. I saw the doctor in January and, in less than five seconds, he said, oh, you have a mucocele. He said that it almost certainly would not go away without surgery. I was not convinced. I decided to wait awhile and see if it would go away on its own.
Someone has asked if these things ever get smaller or go away on their own. There are exceptions, I suppose, but for the most part, the answer is that these buggers almost never go away without surgery. Sure, you can make them temporarily smaller. Just squeeze them and the mucus will shoot out. However, the darn things usually fill up again within a day or two.
So, sure, I bought some over the counter products and essentially just wasted my money. And I would pop the darn thing every few days. By April, I had had enough of living that way and I scheduled the surgery. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made.
The surgery lasted less than one-half hour. The doctor gave me a few shots in my mouth before the surgery and, as a result, I felt nothing during the surgery. It was weird. I could see that the doctor was operating on me but I could not feel it at all. Just as well. Anyway, he pulled out two mucoceles from the site, showed me one, and then stitched me up.
I saw the doctor again about ten days later and his assistant took out some stitches. It did not hurt at all. I returned about a week later and the rest of the stitches were removed. So I was about three weeks out from the surgery and, when i looked at my inner lip, I could barely even see the incision. I am pretty happy about that. On another website, I saw a before and after picture and the guy's inner lip looked like the doctor had taken a steak knife to it. Seriously. It was gross.
I am now about ten or eleven weeks out from the surgery. The incision still has a bit of hardness to the touch. However, I do not notice it except when I touch it with a finger. Even before the surgery, the doctor told me that there would be some residual hardness beneath the incision for three or four months after the surgery. He said that, if it is still there at that point, and it bothers me, he can give me a shot that should break it up.
In conclusion, there is no way that I would want to live for decades with a mucocele. They are too distracting. And life is too short to put up with that. The main thing is to find a good doctor. My doctor is not a plastic surgeon so I guess I disagree with the idea that you are going to end up with something ugly if you do not see a plastic surgeon. My doctor is an ear, nose and throat specialist. He said that those doing these surgeries run the gambit from family practitioners (which I probably would shy away from) to plastic and oral surgeons. I ended up somewhere in the middle and am quite, quite happy.
Best wishes to everyone wrestling with these buggers.
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