Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Six extractions and ten wasted days
I never did finish up my last post because of a...toothache. I hadn't been to dentist in fifteen years, yes fifteen years, but don't be too judgmental; I was an uninsured waiter throughout the nineties and had more pressing health issues when I worked for the city. Finally decided to get some long overdue dental work done this year. Since my plan has $1500 maximum in a calendar year, I waited until October figuring that I'd space out the needed work over two years -- turns out I waited too long. Go see a dentist who says that I need my three remaining wisdom teeth and three other teeth (if you can still call them that) pulled, a root canal, a crown, three plugs and some minor work. She refers me to one specialist for the extractions and another for the root canal. Call for the appointment about the extraction first, have the consultation and get an appointment for the extractions on Dec. 28. Decide to wait until the new year to get the other work done. On the Friday before Christmas, I get a call from the oral surgeon's office saying that he'd be out of town that week and the appointment would have to be rescheduled to Jan. 2. Figured it was my own fault for waiting until the last minute to try schedule it around the year end. Also, I was elated about being able to fully enjoy that week off that university employees get between Christmas and New Year's.
No such luck. I didn't have any pain when I decided that it was time to see a dentist, but was kept awake by toothaches a couple of nights afterwards -- the last time being the night before the oral surgeon's office called. Since then, it's been almost every night. The Friday before Christmas I took a Tylenol 3 at 2am, still awake with pain at six am. Tried brushing with Sensodyne and that actually worked -- for a couple of days. But it had been sleepless, finally drifting off to something resembling sleep around daybreak, every night from Dec. 26 to Dec. 31. Even left-over hydrocodone from abdominal surgery a few years ago didn't help. Hydrocodone combined with Lorazepam (don't ask) didn't, but those two drugs might have gotten old and lost some of their effectiveness. When I remembered that I had a prescription for Percocet and an antibiotic to be filled and went to the drug store Monday, I slept fine.
Anyway, I had hoped to use my eleven day vacation to do a lot of more enjoyable things than blogging, but I really had hoped to follow up on that post. I still think that it's inexcusable that the Picayune did its "naughty list" editorial without any mention of the sanitation contracts. I'll go into more reasons after I've recuperated, but the paper should have at least mentioned its effect on a racially polarizing election. Also wanted to follow up on a comment that I made at Adrastos; Jarvis DeBerry really is an asshole. Blanco's out of office, so she no longer needs to be exposed or opposed. I'm quite serious when I wonder when I wonder how DeBerry reconciles the venom that he spits at Blanco with his Christian faith that he writes about almost as often as expresses his hatred for Blanco.
No such luck. I didn't have any pain when I decided that it was time to see a dentist, but was kept awake by toothaches a couple of nights afterwards -- the last time being the night before the oral surgeon's office called. Since then, it's been almost every night. The Friday before Christmas I took a Tylenol 3 at 2am, still awake with pain at six am. Tried brushing with Sensodyne and that actually worked -- for a couple of days. But it had been sleepless, finally drifting off to something resembling sleep around daybreak, every night from Dec. 26 to Dec. 31. Even left-over hydrocodone from abdominal surgery a few years ago didn't help. Hydrocodone combined with Lorazepam (don't ask) didn't, but those two drugs might have gotten old and lost some of their effectiveness. When I remembered that I had a prescription for Percocet and an antibiotic to be filled and went to the drug store Monday, I slept fine.
Anyway, I had hoped to use my eleven day vacation to do a lot of more enjoyable things than blogging, but I really had hoped to follow up on that post. I still think that it's inexcusable that the Picayune did its "naughty list" editorial without any mention of the sanitation contracts. I'll go into more reasons after I've recuperated, but the paper should have at least mentioned its effect on a racially polarizing election. Also wanted to follow up on a comment that I made at Adrastos; Jarvis DeBerry really is an asshole. Blanco's out of office, so she no longer needs to be exposed or opposed. I'm quite serious when I wonder when I wonder how DeBerry reconciles the venom that he spits at Blanco with his Christian faith that he writes about almost as often as expresses his hatred for Blanco.
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Good luck with the dental work. I just went through something similar, (and my neglect was for similar reasons), and I have to say that having two teeth extracted by an oral surgeon was a million times better than having them extracted by the dentist. First-class sedation and somehow, virtually no pain afterwards. I wish a the same outcome and a very speedy recovery.
Damn! Feel better, and hope the new year doesn't bring any more dental or medical work such as this on you.
Mixing said pain relievers with copious amounts of alcohol can occasionally result in rest. Too much hydrocodone makes me nauseous, but mixing it with alcohol makes it work as a pain killer.
YMMV
And I make it a point not to read Jarvis any more. I'll read Lolis and that's about it in the T-P.
YMMV
And I make it a point not to read Jarvis any more. I'll read Lolis and that's about it in the T-P.
Thanks for the good wishes and suggestions. Got a call from the oral surgeon's this morning, he's snowed in somewhere -- surgery put off for a week. Fortunately, the antibiotic that I started yesterday seems to have gotten rid of the toothache. Guess the infection causes the inflammation that causes the pain.
It's probably good that you've had to put it off and are on antibiotics for a while. The infection I had made the anesthesia "not take" so they ended up postponing the extraction. I was so ready to be done with it all, but they sent me home with more antibiotics and an extremely sore jaw from all the injections.
Thanks again, Lisa. I wondered about that when the toothaches started, because I thought I remembered something about that from when I saw a dentist 15 years ago. Nothing like what you experienced, but it seems like the dentist I saw then put me on antibiotics before doing the work that got done then.
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