Monday, August 19, 2013

I Need a Root Canal

How's that for a kick in the teeth? Actually, the way my jaw has felt for the past couple of days a kick in the teeth would feel good in comparison! It started Friday night when I decided to try a new flavor of ice cream, lemon chiffon. When it hit my teeth on the right lower side I about went through the roof it hurt so much! And it kept throbbing for hours. It finally settled down and I slept fine that night. Next morning, forgot all about it till I had cereal for breakfast with cold milk. ACK! The pain! Thing didn't really get much worse and then felt better and I slept fine Saturday night. Sunday was a different story.

Yesterday things just got progressively worse as the day went on. I was eating acetaminophen, aspirin, brushing my teeth over and over with sensitive toothpaste, and using what was left of the topical analgesic I had left from my last bout of tooth pain. nothing worked. By the time I went to bed that tooth and the ones near it just throbbed and by 3:30 am that whole side of my face was in agony so I was online looking for home remedies of which the usual always seemed to be oil of cloves. (I see poor Dustin Hoffman as the Marathon Man running through my head whenever I hear that phrase!) I found another odd remedy of sticking a garlic clove next to the offending tooth. Now garlic I had though it didn't seem to help until I bit down slightly on it keeping it between my upper and lower jaw. I also propped myself up in bed with a extra pillows to keep the blood from pooling in my jaw. It seemed to help, though it was probably more like the sitting up than the garlic. I managed to get through the rest of the night, waking up a lot, but at least time was passing faster till I could call the dentist at 9 am and get in to see him.

I was at the office by 10:15, two x-rays were taken and sure enough the dentist said the roots were dying in #31. So he prescribed a week of penicillin which hopefully will kick in soon and take the swelling from the probably infection down. I got some fresh topical gel at the store and also tried taking one of my back pain pills (I can't take ibuprofen or that other over the counter anti-inflammatory any more). I sure hope things kick in soon because it hasn't been long enough to take more pills and the aching is just miserable!

Oh, there aren't really any endodontists in the area so I have to drive nearly 2 hours to the city of Gaylord, MI to get this done, hopefully next week at the latest. I've been to that guy before, he's very good, just very expensive. No such thing as dental insurance in our house!

One more note to add. I grabbed a bag of frozen peas and placed it against my jawline. INSTANT relief! I don't know what I didn't think of it earlier except that my brain was in a fog due to pain. And as cold hurts on the inside my brain probably figured cold would hurt on the outside, too. Finally, I use for peas! (I still can't stand the taste!)

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