Dear Bonnie
God bless you for getting back to me so quickly. I will follow up with Dr. Villafana. Do you know if he is very skilled at working around the trigeminal nerves? I heard a while ago of someone called Wesley Shankland in the USA have you/sandy ever seen him?
I have/am going through a similar story as sandy…it has been a nightmare……I have had countless surgeries and no improvement. My health is failing badly and no one can help me here (UK) The infection is just too extensive…….
I hope Sandy is/continues to feel better.
I thank you once again. Have a good day.
kind regards
Michelle
Dear Michelle,
Yes, we have heard about Wesley Shankland, but Sandy did not go to him.
From conversations I’ve had with other people who have had oral surgery by various Oral Maxillofacial Surgeons in the US, I have not heard of one who has been able to perform surgeries that completely remove the infected bone every time (the people often have to go back for surgery in the same area over and over and they continue to have infected and dead bone in that area).
This is what I know about jawbone surgery involving nerves:
After removing one of her molars, Sandy’s dentist placed a bovine bone implant in her jawbone that did not absorb into her bone as it was supposed to and became infected. The implant ended up wrapped around the nerve and neither of the two U.S. Oral Maxillofacial Surgeons Sandy went to would go near it. One of them did what he could to remove the infection and dead bone, but told her she could possibly be paralyzed on that side of her face if he tried to remove anything near her nerve.
This is why we love Dr. Villafana:
Dr. Villafana spent two hours very carefully removing from Sandy’s nerve every trace of the bovine bone implant and then he removed the remaining infected bone. The area healed perfectly in the months after surgery (it took Sandy several months before she could comfortably chew food again).
However, Sandy’s road to recovery wasn’t quick and easy even after meeting Dr. Villafana.
Sandy had to have several surgeries by Dr. Villafana — all in different areas of her jawbone — and all but the last two areas he found with his very sophisticated X-ray machine.
Before Sandy’s last surgery with Dr. Villafana and because he was relying only on his X-ray machine, he was convinced that he had removed all of her infected bone (cavitations).
When we first met Dr. Villafana we asked his opinion of the Cavitat device and he said he thought it was a great device, but he did not trust any Cavitat technicians to use it correctly at that time.
So, after having operated on Sandy several times, when she called to tell him she felt she still had dead bone in her jaw, he said he thought he had removed it all, but we were welcome to come back and he would take a look. So, we drove to Mexico to see him again and he took X-rays of all the areas where he had operated and compared them to the X-rays he had taken before he operated and convinced me (not Sandy) that he had removed all the infected and dead bone (her jawbone looked beautiful on the X-rays — not like the shadowy X-rays of before).
Then, after Sandy called him again to try to convince him she still had infected/dead bone, he surprised her and sent her for a Cavitat exam. The Cavitat showed that she had two areas that had infected and dead bone. They were areas that his X-ray machine showed no infection and where he had not previously operated!
It has been a tremendous help that Dr. Villafana believes that the Cavitat technicians (who work where he sends his patients for their Cavitat exams) are now experienced enough to use the Cavitat device,
My advice is to ask Dr. Villafana’s secretary to ask him your questions and call her back another day for his answers. Or, ask if she has email and, if she does, ask for her email address so you can email her your questions to give to him.
Sandy is definitely feeling better than ever now.
I know how you feel about your situation being a nightmare. I wish I had a dollar (or a pound) for every time I heard Sandy say “This is a nightmare.”
Love,
Bonnie