Ever Had a Toothache??

Over the weekend I suffered from a toothache. I was in MISERY. The whole left side of my mouth hurt, and nothing would relieve the pain. I tried ibuprofen. I tried heat. I tried cold. I tried rubbing it. I tried a surface numbing agent.

NOTHING HELPED.

I even thought about having Ted smack me in the mouth to see if that helped. But I knew he wouldn't do it, even if I begged him to.

By Sunday morning it was excruciating. The pain was bringing tears to my eyes, and at one point it was so bad that I even got light-headed for a couple of minutes. Then, the worst part came...

I COULDN'T TALK BECAUSE IT HURT SO MUCH.

Then the pain began to come and go. I tried all the things I had tried on Saturday and eventually got a wee tiny bit of relief every once in a while.

I was able to go to sleep Sunday night, but the pain woke me up in the middle of the night, and I was never able to get back to sleep.

I went to school Monday morning and told my principal that I was going to call my dentist as soon as their office opened and would beg to get in as soon as I could. She understood.

Fortunately they had a morning opening, so I was able to leave school and get to the dentist's office. He checked all around. There was no visible problem, and the x-rays showed nothing out of the ordinary, but he eventually said he thought I had something called pulpitis. He felt as though I should go to "the big city" about 30 miles away to see the specialist he occasionally refers patients to. He even called and talked to the endodontist's office, telling them that I needed to get in ASAP. They told him that they might be able to see me later in the day and asked if that would work. When Jay (my dentist) asked me if I would be able to make it, I told him I would get it to work out. He then gave them my cell number and work number and they said they would call me as soon as they knew something.

I left and went back to work. I was in the classroom for all of about 5 minutes when the phone rang, and the endodontist's office wanted to know if I could be there in two hours. I told them YES!

(My principal was very understanding about this. I'm fortunate in that department!)

I was just hoping that I would finally get some relief from the awful pain. Ted ended up leaving work to take me. That was definitely for the best, as I was so tired from being up most of the night, I was afraid I'd fall asleep while I was driving.

After we got there, I had to fill out paperwork. (I detest doing that, especially when I don't feel well. Why on earth can't there be a nationwide centralized patient information network out there so that patients do NOT have to do that paperwork crap each and every time they go to a new doctor or dentist???)

They called me back to the "inner sanctum" and I was sitting in the chair at 1:20.

I didn't get out of the chair until almost 4:00.

WHEW.

He tapped on things in my mouth. I bit on things. He put cold stuff in my mouth. He pushed on teeth. There was no visible problem. The x-rays showed nothing out of the ordinary (the same thing Jay had said).

For some ODD reason, all the freaking pain had STOPPED.

What the heck was up with that????

At one point, he even thought that it may all be sinus related because I was still getting over a nasty sinus infection.

Finally, he tried the cold thing again, and I just about flew out of the chair.

BINGO.

Then he did a root canal.

I never thought that I would enjoy having something like that done, but it was just heaven having relief from the pain.

When he finished up, he said he was not totally convinced that this would solve the problem completely.

Great.

Dandy.

Yesterday it was still tender and a little sore, but very tolerable.

Today it's been even better.

I still can't chew on that side, since it's getting a little better each day, I bet I'll be able to have pizza by the weekend.

That's my plan anyway.

So for any of you that have ever had a nasty toothache, I FEEL SO BADLY FOR YOU!

So speaking of teeth, I'm going to leave you with an old picture that I scanned with my new handy dandy handheld photo scanner. This old photo was taken in black and white, back in 1968, and the teeth just look so pretty.

What a great smile!