ydna47's Blog

Impossible for anyone to say. I think everyone here would say that you need to get it checked out by a physician. On a personal note, I had a layover at the Dubai Airport when I was going to and coming back from Delhi. The airport was quite the place, very opulent. Good luck.

Sorry, I mean yes, from what I have read, the mucocele can appear on the inside cheek, as well.

From what I have read, the answer is yes.

My doc pulled out a fairly large mucocele and showed it to me. He then poked around some more and pulled out a smaller mucocele. That's it, he said. Time to close. I have some minor scar tissue still. But it is no big deal. The mucocele is definitely gone. If you still have a mucocele, another surgery probably is the only option, as distasteful as that may seem. Some docs apparently do not know what they are doing. Other docs know what they are doing and just miss something in good faith that might be hard to see.

Does not sound like a long term solution. Sounds like it just preserves a sort of mucocele status quo. If that is correct, I do not see it as a solution. Drying up a mucocele is not a long term solution because the thing is still there. Given a choice between surgery and putting that product on my lip for the rest of my life, well, surgery is an easy answer.

I have never heard of such a "procedure," if you want to call it that, being successful at completely solving a mucocele problem. My family practice doctor did not even mess with it at all. He said, oh, you have a mucocele and need to see a specialist for surgery.

All I can say is that I did pop mine a number of times with a sterilized needle and it always came back. I knew it would. I just needed some relief until I had the surgery. Other than that, your questions about the appearance of the thing you have are probably too hard for anyone to answer other than a doctor who actually gets to see the thing. Good luck.

Hi, I am not familiar with the laser. I had the usual surgery and two of the little buggers were removed from the same site. End of story. No more mucoceles. No recurrent mucoceles. From what I have bee told, I think the buggers (the glands) do need to be completely removed or the mucocele has not really been removed or taken out of action. When I read about people who had surgery but the gland was not removed, I am always left scratching my head about the doctors.

Hi, I would advise you to take a few deep breaths and relax. This does not have to be a big deal.

My mucocele was about the same size as yours. The size of yours is not unusual at all. Onto your questions:

1) After insurance, my surgery cost maybe a couple of hundred bucks. Well worth it.

2) The surgery lasted 30 minutes from the time I received a shot to numb me up to the time the doctor put the last suture or stitch in. He was operating within several minutes of giving me the shot. I felt nothing during the entire surgery. And I felt very little pain or discomfort in the days after the surgery.

3) I experienced very little swelling from day one. By three weeks after the surgery, no one looking at me would have been able to tell that there was anything wrong with my lower lip.

4) I had the same concern as you about my inner lip looking the same after the surgery. My mucocele was maybe a half inch or 3/4 inch down from the top of my lip. Anyway, my inner lip looks absolutely the same now as it did before I got the mucocele. If you were to look at my inner lip, and I pulled it down for you to have a good look, you would not even see an incision now. (And my surgery was less than three months ago.)

5) I have no swelling at all at this point. And the numbness is all gone. It was never a big deal. The last bit of slight numbness left in the last couple of weeks. The incision sight is still a bit hard at this point but that is normal. It is scar tissue. The doctor told me it would ease up and should be all gone within three to four months. I have noticed that it has gotten a lot less firm the last few weeks. And it never was a big deal from day one after the surgery as far as that goes.

6) Finally, you might want to consider having someone other than a dentist do the surgery. I am firmly in the camp of people who does not believe that a plastic surgeon, or even an oral surgeon, is needed to do an excellent result. My doctor is an ear, nose and throat doctor. He has done a great job on my ears when they have been plugged up. He was completely, completely awesome in how he handled this surgery. The main thing is just to ask the doctor how many of these surgeries he or she has done and what sorts of results he or she has gotten. And ask what sort of result you should expect. If he tells you anything much less than what I have described as my experience, I would consider seeing another doctor for an exam so that you at least have a choice.

7) Here is another suggestion for you: Call to the clinic. Ask to be transferred to the ear, nose and throat desk. When you get there, ask which doctors do the surgery for mucocele removal. Write their names down. Then ask if you can talk to the nurse for one of the doctors. Then ask the nurse some questions about which of the docs have the most experience with this sort of surgery. This plan could save you lots of time. The main thing is not to freak out over this. With a little bit of thought, and a good plan, you will be fine and wondering what all the hub-bub was six months from now.

Best wishes.

Yep, got mine the usual way - bit on my lower lip while eating. I had done this a few times over the years before this with no problem to speak of. However, the last time i did it, a mucocele was the result. So I had the surgery and it was perfect. I realized that I had gotten a little careless or sloppy with my bite. I have my main bite but when i get careless or in a real hurry there is, well, an alternative hinge in my jaw that permits me to bite a bit differently. And it is that bite that gets me in trouble, ie, makes it much more likely that I will bite my lower lip. So in the immediate aftermath of my mucocele, I consciously got more deliberate and careful for awhile. Gradually, my "good" bite got back to being second nature and so now i do not really think about my bite anymore. The small amount of effort that I needed to make to get rid of the "bad" bite when I am in a hurry was well, well worth it because mucoceles are real buggers to deal with and I do not ever, ever want to get one again.

Hi, well, it sounds like maybe you should consider cancelling the surgery for now. Then wait and see what happens. If the thing goes away, great. If it keeps coming back, then you will know that there are big and small cycles to a lot of mucoceles and maybe then you all will decide that you might as well just have it removed, as opposed to having to deal with the thing off and on for the next 50+ years.

If it truly is a mucocele, the odds are overwhelming that the thing will again grow in size, probably sooner than later. But some people do claim that they had a mucocele and the thing just went away permanently. So, again, there probably is no harm in considering cancelling the surgery and rescheduling later on down the line if you need to.

When I got mine in December, I saw the doc in January and he said matter of factly that I need the surgery. I held off for several months, hoping it would go away. And sometimes it did get smaller for a few days, or even a week, but it always grew right back in size. By waiting a few months, that was what I needed to satisfy myself that I was stuck with a mucocele and did not want to go through the rest of my life with the thing getting smaller and then larger etc etc etc and so I had the surgery and am very, very happy.

If the doc is good, the doc will tell your son all he needs to know. Mine told me to put some ice on the incision for about 36-48 hours after the surgery. And so I used one of those cold pack things and it worked well. I had very little swelling, even on day one. Some folks will tell you to avoid real salty foods for a few days after the surgery and that probably is good advice. I also found it helpful to drink everything (juice, water, milk etc) through a straw for about three or four days after the surgery. The incision was a bit sensitive, and at least a bit swollen, and using the straw made it easier keep stuff away from the incision site. Using a straw would probably be the best advice i could give. My doc did not mention it to me but it just seemed intuitive. Good luck. I hope all goes well.

Hey, sorry to hear about the way thiings are going and how things have been handled. My mucucele was maybe one-half inch down from my lip. The incision came up closer to the lip. After the surgery, I was concerned that maybe people would be able to see the incision when I smiled or even just while talking. It turned out not to be a problem at all, as the incision is not really even visible at all to me when I pull my lip down and look at it in the mirror, which I don't do much. My doc, I think, did an excellent job with the incision and with the stitching. The thing was completely closed up except for maybe the slightest of openings that would sting just a bit after I ate the first few days after the surgery. But I avoided real salty foods for two days and the thing closed up and I ate what I wanted from that point. It seems that some docs are just much, much better at cutting and stitching than others. So stick up for yourself at this point and insist that your doc make things right.

Hi, I am about seven weeks out from surgery now and have only the slightest of numbness left. The numbness consistently has gotten less and less each week and so at this rate I am guessing it will be gone for me within another month tops. I do have some hardness (scar tissue) but it is not a big deal and does not impact me. My doctor said to give it at least about four months. If the hardness is not all gone at that point, which he thinks it will be, he said that he can shoot it with cortisone and that will get rid of residual hardness in the majority of cases.

Oh my God, the thing looks hideous. Is it in full view like that all the time?

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.