Karma's Grave Mistake..

I barely stumbled to bed without falling on the floor this morning. It turns out that it didn't much matter though, because I didn't get much sleep as I tossed and turned with hot flashes, cold sweats, and constantly being on the verge of vomiting. I guess the pain medicine I took just didn't agree with me. Maybe I just didn't eat enough with it. I'm not sure what happened, but it was a miserable few hours.

By eight o'clock this morning, I just couldn't be horizontal anymore. The room was spinning, and I was drenched in sweat when I stumbled out into the hall. Mom was already awake and had read the note I left her before bed this morning, telling her all was not well. She was on high mom alert when I slunk into the office. I was white as a sheet, and dripping, and I didn't know what I needed first, a drink of cool water, a fan, a cracker to ease the waves of nausea in my stomach, everything.. or nothing.

The last week she's been asking me how I'm feeling every morning when I emerge. She didn't need to today. She frowned at me, and grabbed the phone. She told me that she's been sitting idly aside and letting me do things my way all week, but enough was enough, and she was taking over from here. She made me cough up the number to the dentist's clinic and got me some water. The water had me running to the bathroom immediately though, so we switched to crackers. Those helped much more. Mom growled my case report off to the emergency operator on the other end of the phone, and she said she would get me an appointment momentarily. They shared Mom-On-The-Warpath stories until they could get Dr. Aaron on the phone. He wasn't even scheduled to be at work until nine, but somehow she got him on the phone. We were dressed and in the car by eight-thirty.

I wasn't welcomed too warmly. The receptionist staff didn't seem too keen on being rushed to fit me into the morning schedule. I had to wait almost an hour to be seen in between five other patients. One of the hygienists were very sweet, and kept me company while I waited for the doctor. She told me I was a trooper, and she wouldn't have made it through two days in the amount of pain I was in. She said she could see from my face, (aside from the huge amount of swelling, and the colorful bruise on my cheek), that I wasn't doing well.

I wanted to be mad, but Dr. Aaron really was incredibly and genuinely concerned when he finally got to me. He was patting me on the arm as he pried my mouth open, and poked around. He knew he was hurting me, so he was extra sincere. I had actually thought the teeth were feeling better, and it was mostly my cheek and jaw that were still hurting, but by the time he finished sticking me, and banging on my teeth with his tools, I realized just how much pain I still had inside those fillings. We took x-rays, and things were looking much more clear from there.

I'll try to give you the run-down summary without rambling on too awfully long. We started with my cheek pain. The bruise and massive swelling was an obvious side-affect of something going on there, but not indicative of what was actually causing the trauma. Apparently, when I got an injection of Novocaine in my cheek, he accidentally punctured a blood vessel, and Novocaine leaked into my blood stream, causing a hematoma, and consequently the bruising and the swelling along with it. It's not overly common, but it does happen, and they hurt something wicked for weeks.

The intense pain in my jaw was probably explained the easiest of all. Apparently, I have TMJ.

The temporomandibular joints (TMJs) connect your lower jaw to your skull. There are two matching joints -- one on each side of your head, located just in front of your ears. The abbreviation "TMJ" literally refers to the joint but is often used to refer to any disorders or symptoms of this region. Such problems include popping sounds in the jaw, inability to fully open the mouth, jaw pain, headaches, earaches, toothaches, and various other types of facial pain.

I guess that having my mouth wedged open for more than a half an hour while Dr. Aaron drilled and filled two cavities, alongside with having TMJ.. it was just too much for me, and explains why I can't open my mouth more than a quarter of an inch without some pretty awful pain now. This will most likely last a couple weeks as well.

We moved on to X-Rays of the teeth involved to see what was going on inside there. The two cavities I had were small, but deep, and to fill them, Dr. Aaron had to go all the way to the nerve wall, and he didn't know that until he got in there to do them. The filling composites are sitting directly on top of my nerves, and thus causing all the pain, and sensitivity to hot foods, cold foods, chewing, and pretty much everything. I didn't realize just how bad they hurt until he started banging on them with his tools to see if they were sore, and I'm not exaggerating when I mean he actually banged on them, (quite hard). Foreign material sitting on my nerves like that hasn't allowed everything to heal properly, so an infection has set in there on top of everything else. Dr. Aaron prescribed an antibiotic for me for the next thirty days which should clear it up.

The troubling news of the day is learning that my teeth either have to adapt, or BE adapted. I went in with no pain and small cavities, and now, I'm here. Dr. Aaron said the pain medicine he prescribed the other day without having seen me couldn't even come close to dulling the kind of real pain I should be in right now, and prescribed me something a little bit more hardy. At the pharmacy today I had to give them my driver's license and wait three hours to be approved, and I swear they must have done a small background check to boot. It must be pretty intense stuff. I'm supposed to keep calling back with progress reports every couple of days, and in the words of Dr. Aaron.. "Don't John Wayne it, if you hurt, even a little bit, let me know right away." It's funny how things have taken on a much more urgent tone in just a day, and a mom intervention, lol. At any rate, I'm really concerned about my teeth now. If the pain doesn't lessen substantially in the next eight days, and eventually stop hurting me all-together, then I have to get scheduled for two emergency root canals next week.

We've all heard the horror stories about root canals. I've never gotten one done, personally, and I know they say it's come a long way, but.. I'm still scared, I won't lie. Dr. Aaron said he usually doesn't do root canals, period, but because I'm such a sweetheart, he'd do the small one, to save me a little money.. but the larger one he'd have to refer me out to a specialist, which will be very costly. I just.. can't even think about that right now. It's just one more thing that I can't think about too much, or the dwelling will send me off an edge I might not get back from. If it wasn't for bad luck, I'd have no luck to speak of.

I finally got my new pain medication tonight, and took my first one with dinner. I'm supposed to be very careful with them, and only take one when I'm able to eat a large meal with it. (Eating large meals isn't entirely desirable right now when I have pain with every bite, especially anything that I have to open my mouth wide to fit in, in the first place). It took about two hours before I really felt the full effects of the pill, and now I'm struggling to stay upright. Dr. Aaron said they'd make me sleepy, but he didn't say it would be nearly impossible to keep my eyes open. The pain has dulled to the point of mild discomfort, which is so very nice after the last week of sheer misery I've had, but I'm so out of it that it's taken me a little over five hours to reach this point in my update, (I'm not even kidding). I wanted to update everyone though, so I'm diligently trudging along, but in case my updates are very short, or non-existent for the next week, I wanted to let everyone know why and where I might be hiding. Dave might have a consistent nap buddy for the next several days, as I muddle through the pain and fatigue.

It's getting so late, I can't even believe it's almost midnight already. I need to try and work on icing some cookies tonight before I get even more behind than I already am. Thank You all so very much for joining us this evening, and until next time, Much Love, Many Hugs, and Good Night to You All.