This has not been a good week for me.
Over the weekend, a tooth started bothering me. By Sunday night, I was in some pretty serious pain. Percocet didn't touch it. I spent a sleepless night, waiting for morning to call my dentist. I headed in to see him on Monday, by which time I could not even lightly touch the tooth without hitting the ceiling from the pain! He opened the tooth, did a partial root canal, drained the abcess, and I was a happy camper.
Until the novocaine wore off. Then the pain came back, a little at a time, until it was almost as bad as before I saw him! This was Tuesday afternoon, and I headed back up to see him. He did basically the same thing as Monday, and finally said the tooth could probably not be saved. He arranged an emergency visit to an oral surgeon for today. Again, I was fine until the novocaine wore off, and then the pain returned again. It was different this time--in stead of being localized to just the tooth, it was the whole lower jaw area. It was hard to open my mouth.
Knowing I would have to have nothing to eat or drink for 6 hours before my appointment, since I'd be having IV sedation, I got up at the crack of dawn this morning to eat some breakfast and take some Motrin and my antibiotic. Then i went back to bed to pass the time. I got to the oral surgeon just before noon, and had the coolest Xray I've ever had. I sat in this nifty chair with my chin on a sort of shelf and a little plastic thing between my front teeth, as the Xray machine moved in a circle around me. Pretty nifty!
The oral surgeon took a look at the Xray and my tooth, and agreed that the tooth would have to go. But not today. Today, under IV sedation, he cut into the gum and insterted a drain to let out all the abcess. On Friday i will go back to him and have the drain taken out. I left his office feeling pretty comfortable, with a wad of gauze in my mouth, and orders to take the antibiotics, not eat or drink until the gauze came out (after the bleeding stopped), and to only eat mushy foods until Friday.
The IV sedation was actually rather cool. He sprayed my arm with a super cold spray--super cold but not at all uncomfortable. I never felt the IV go in, but almost immediately I started to feel woozy. Gotta love that Versed! I said goodnight, and next thing I knew it was all over! I was sort of groggy for about 20 minutes, so it was good that I had had a friend drive me there and back.
Once home, I put an ice pack over my lower jaw, as directed, 15 minutes on, 15 minutes off. Despite that, my jaw has swollen up pretty big. This apparently is normal, but it looks anything but! The pain was pretty minimal, even as the novocaine was wearing off. I thought "ok, this is going well".
But wait, not so fast! I noticed I was feeling a little itchy. This is not a totally uncommon thing for me, since I have very dry skin in the winter and tend to get itchy quite often. But it got worse and worse. So I went in the bathroom to have a look, and found that I was starting to break out in hives! They spread all over my body, arms, legs, wrists, back, butt, chest, even in unmentionable spots! So, I called to oral surgeon to say it looked like I was having an allergic reaction to something. The Versed? The antibiotic? Who knows. At any rate, since I wasn't having any trouble breathing, they said to take Benadryl, and if breathing became a problem, go to the ER.
Great. I took the Benadryl, and my breathing stayed fine. Then I realized, maybe I shouldn't take the antibiotic anymore? So I called my dentist, the one who started me on them, to ask what I should do. He agreed that with my history of multiple antibiotic allergies, it was likely that that was the culprit. So he said to stop taking it, and to take 2 Benadryl every 6 hours until Friday when I go back to the oral surgeon. OK, but what about antibiotics? The whole idea is that the drain will help the abcess clear out, and the antibiotic will do it's work even better. But now I'm not TAKING an antibiotic! He said it was OK, and he was gonna talk to the oral surgeon anyway, so I just left it there.
The Benadryl knocked me flat out. I slept from 3:30 until about 6, and woke up hangry (wonder why--maybe becuase I hadn't eaten in 12 hours? I made some pastina for dinner, and my dear daughter the chef made mac and cheese for herself and her brother. We mixed up a batch of reduced fat soft vanilla ice cream, which was really good and felt so nice in my mouth. I could only eat a little, and then started feeling really nauseous. I proceeded to lie in the recliner and go back to sleep from about 6:45 until 9.
Now the pain has kicked in a bit more, so I took some Motrin. The hives and itching are gone. I'll take more Benadryl in a little while, along with the rest of the Motrin, and try to sleep for a few hours. I rigged up a head wrap to hold the ice in place and that seemed to work well. My jaw is still very swollen. But at least I didn't have to go to the emergency room!
My big concern in all of this is that I have to avoid "excessive" activity until Friday. In other words, no exercise! I've already missed Monday and today at the gym. (I did take a pool class yesterday becuase I was feeling decent.) Now I have 2 more days of no gym. HOPEFULLY I can go back on Saturday, but I won't know until I see the oral surgeon Friday. This has me worried. 4 days of no exercise? Heck, even after my surgery I'll be able to lift hand weights, and I'll have PT to get me moving. But this just sitting around is way weird for me! I'm guessing the scale will tell the sad story on Friday, probably showing a gain. True, I'm eating less, which helps, but still, I don't want to lose ground.
And I'm concerned that I'm so concerned! Am I obsessed with exercise? Is it "normal" to be worried about missing it? Or do I have a problem? I just have too much time on my hands that I can spend worrying!
So far, I've not been real impressed with 2009. If this is an indication of what the year is going to be like, I think I'd prefer to just go back to 2008!
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