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Dental Visit
Dear Doctor,
About a week ago I had 2 of my wisdom teeth removed. One of them required light surgery (the gums had to be cut open). I bled rather profusely and was stitched up. Yesterday, a week after the extraction, I had the stitches removed. I believe that my dentist may have created a small cut during the process and I also may have been bleeding a little from the part of my mouth that was just unstitched(maybe a few drops, not much). However, my worry actually stems from the small 2 - 5 oz. plastic cups that they use. I recall that they were rushing because they were behind schedule and after rinsing from the cup I noticed some pieces of small brown residue on the bottom of the cup, which could have been food or some sort of dental product that they had used. Since I had my wisdom tooth pulled fairly recently I had to use a prescribed mouth rinse which forced me to always eat my breakfast before brushing my teeth and using the rinse. This leads me to believe that if those particles were food then it couldn't have come from me. My dentist usually cleans teeth rather forcefully too, which causes minor bleeding from his/her patients gums. The total time time they spent preparing for me and the removal of the stitches probably sums up to a minimum of 10-15 minutes. My questions are basically could HIV survive in water for that long and still be able to infect me and was there enough HIV in the blood water mixture to cause me worry? Please post reasons/facts/figures if you can as opposed to "yes" or "no". Thanks in advance for any useful//non-derogatory comments.
About a week ago I had 2 of my wisdom teeth removed. One of them required light surgery (the gums had to be cut open). I bled rather profusely and was stitched up. Yesterday, a week after the extraction, I had the stitches removed. I believe that my dentist may have created a small cut during the process and I also may have been bleeding a little from the part of my mouth that was just unstitched(maybe a few drops, not much). However, my worry actually stems from the small 2 - 5 oz. plastic cups that they use. I recall that they were rushing because they were behind schedule and after rinsing from the cup I noticed some pieces of small brown residue on the bottom of the cup, which could have been food or some sort of dental product that they had used. Since I had my wisdom tooth pulled fairly recently I had to use a prescribed mouth rinse which forced me to always eat my breakfast before brushing my teeth and using the rinse. This leads me to believe that if those particles were food then it couldn't have come from me. My dentist usually cleans teeth rather forcefully too, which causes minor bleeding from his/her patients gums. The total time time they spent preparing for me and the removal of the stitches probably sums up to a minimum of 10-15 minutes. My questions are basically could HIV survive in water for that long and still be able to infect me and was there enough HIV in the blood water mixture to cause me worry? Please post reasons/facts/figures if you can as opposed to "yes" or "no". Thanks in advance for any useful//non-derogatory comments.
Thanks for the quick reply, I'll assume that you're saying that HIV needs more direct contact like, through unprotected sex / sharing IV drugs and isn't really transferable through other mediums such as tap water in my case.
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