Eleven Days And Counting...

I'm going to start this post off by saying I'm high as f@#k on T3s right now (and I have been for the last eleven days), so if I ramble on or don't make any sense...blame the pills.

Over a year ago, I was enjoying a Lifesaver when I bit down on it and chipped a teeny, tiny corner of my back molar.  A tiny chip, but an annoying one.  I went to the dentist and asked him to sand the corner down.  After that, I didn't think much of it.  That is, until a few months ago when, again, I was eating a mint and another little chip of my tooth came off.

I went back to the dentist and he said he wasn't sure whether I would need a root canal or not.  Without x-rays he wouldn't be able to tell and, since I was pregnant, he couldn't do said x-rays.  I scheduled an appointment for September 4th to get the x-rays done.  I forgot that this was the first day of school (which is always a hectic morning) and when the office phoned to confirm my appointment, I asked if I could switch it.  The first day they could fit me in was October 16th.  As the weeks started to tick by, my tooth began to hurt so I stopped eating on that side of my mouth.

On October 11th, I was eating lunch when a piece of my sandwich shifted over to the wrong side of my mouth.  Before I could react, I bit down and felt instant pain.  I phoned the dentist and asked if they could squeeze me in that afternoon.  Thankfully, they could.  When I got there, x-rays showed that I had cracked my tooth in half and the only thing holding it together was my filling.  The tooth was going to have to come out.  I wasn't worried at all...I've had work done on my mouth that hurt way more than a simple extraction.

The dentist began to pull and realized this puppy wasn't going to come out easily (even though it was broken).  He ended up having to drill into the bone to loosen it up.  Even with that, one of the roots ended up breaking off in my gums.  It was no longer a simple extraction, but I thought, "Meh...I've had a surgeon's fingers up to my eyeballs via my gums before (during a bone graft for my dental implants), I can handle a day or so of pain".  How wrong I was...how very, very wrong.

The dentist sent me home with a prescription for T3s and some strong Motrin.  Over the next couple of days, I realized that not only is the pain not going away, it was actually starting to increase.  Six days after getting it pulled, I went back to the office thinking maybe I had dry socket.  Mr. Dentist took a quick peek and said, "No...it looks like it's healing up nicely! But if you're still in pain, here's another prescription".  I went home, hoping the pain would start to ease up.  Not a chance.

The pain was so bad that my pills were wearing off after two hours.  I was switching back and forth from the T3s to the Motrins.  I sat with an ice pack on my face.  The pain was radiating from the top of my ear to the front of my chin.  I suffered for three more days and went back to the dentist this past Friday.  My dentist was away but his associate was in.  One quick look in my mouth revealed that part of my bone was exposed.  MY BONE WAS EXPOSED.  Two thoughts - my dentist is on crack and "No wonder I'm in so much fricking pain!!".  Fill-in Dentist said he could freeze me up and do some digging to see if there's anything else going on, but that would disturb the parts that have already started to heal.  I said "No" and accepted the prescription he wrote for more painkillers.  He said if I can stand the pain for a few more days, it should start to heal up.

So, it's now Sunday night and here I sit with crossed eyes and a bag of frozen corn wedged between my shoulder and my jaw (so that I can type with two hands).  I'm giving the pain until Tuesday to smarten up and eff off before I head back to see Fill-in Dentist (who I would much rather have as my main dentist) and ask him to just give me a jaw-ectomy.