TOOTH ACHE!

Went to see Torture Guy (aka the dentist) yesterday to finish up the root canal.  He asked me how it had been and I said it had been a little painful since Saturday.  He asked why I didn’t call him and I said that it wasn’t intolerable and I figured I was coming in to see him on Tuesday.  Besides, I can’t take any pain medicine because of the medicine I am on for my arthritis.  He seemed surprised at that and asked what medicine I am taking.  Ok…this is where my confidence in him fell by a long shot.  If he is telling me to take medicine, shouldn’t he already know what I am on so he wouldn’t suggest something that would cause an interaction? He looked at the list in my chart and he looked confused.  In looking at it, he couldn’t see why I couldn’t take Ibuprofen, Aspirin, Tylenol or any other pain reliever.  That’s because he doesn’t know how drugs interact.  Yup…confidence is falling by the minute.

So he said that he couldn’t finish the root canal because clearly I have an infection and he is going to put me on an antibiotic. Now, at this point he hadn’t even looked at the tooth.  He did suggest that I check with my doctor to see if I can take it but I told him that she has put me on antibiotics before so I’m sure it would be fine.

That should have been the end of the appointment.  After all, he said he couldn’t finish the root canal.  But, nooooo…..he said he would remove the temporary filling, rinse out the tooth and then put a new filling in.  AND, since he wasn’t going to do anything more than that, he wasn’t going to bother numbing it first.  He assured me it wouldn’t hurt.  That doing this to a tooth that was already painful wouldn’t hurt.

HE WAS WRONG!!!!

My tooth started throbbing on the way home.  I have a pretty high tolerance for pain since I do have arthritis, but this hurt so much I literally started crying in the car.  And it kept hurting and hurting and hurting.  I took the pain medicine I normally take for my arthritis (Ultram) early, right before dinner, hoping it would cut the pain.  That kind of worked.  It took a slight edge off.  I decided to go to bed about 9:00 because I hoped I could fall asleep despite the pain.  That didn’t work.  It not only hurt at the tooth but the pain extended from my chin up to my ear and pretty much covered the whole side of my head.

At 9:30 I called the answering service for my doctor and they paged her. When she called me, I explained what was going on and she confirmed that I can’t take any of the over-the-counter pain medicine.  She said to take another of the Ultram and, if it still hurt in the middle of the night, to take a third one.  But I couldn’t take more than three.  If it was still bothering me in the morning, she would call in a prescription for Codeine without Tylenol.

Well, it is morning.  I managed to sleep about three hours but am pretty exhausted.  The pain is now more focused on just the tooth but I will definitely need the prescription.  Her office opens at 9:00 so I will be calling at 9:00.  Needless to say, I won’t be going into work today. At least not this morning.  If they really need me, I might be able to go over this afternoon.  But if it still hurts or the medicine knocks me out, I’ll probably stay home the whole day.

The thing that really bothers me is that it didn’t hurt THAT bad before he touched it.  When I asked him if the nerves were dead in the tooth itself, he said they were.  That the pain is from an infection in the cells around the tooth.  “You mean my gums”, I asked.  “No,” he said, “in the bone”.  WHAT?????  How does he know this without taking an x-ray?  And, if that is where the infection is, why rinse out the INSIDE of the tooth?  What he did really, REALLY irritated it and was pretty pointless. I am going to call a different dentist today and see if I can get a second opinion.  Hopefully I will switch to a new dentist.  My confidence in this guy is really low and I would rather he not touch this tooth ever again.

The tooth saga will continue…