This weekend was wild for me. Friday morning, I woke up with a slight tooth ache which I thought was caused by clenching my teeth too tightly the night before. As the day progressed, the pain kept building and as business was closing, the pain became excruciating. Finally, around 8 pm, I called my dentist to ask him what pain medicine I could take for it and what his thoughts were. He asked me a bunch of questions if anything was swollen, fever, sensitivity, etc. He then said that he thought it had to do with hormones while being pregnant and to call my OB to find out what medicine I could take to help out with the pain. He also told me that if it still bothered me Saturday, he had some time in the afternoon to meet me at his office to take a look.
Sadly, the pain kept coming and I didn't know how to get a hold of my OB or an ask a nurse to get some answers. I took Tylenol and it didn't do much with the pain and the Orajel I had only affected me for a minute or two tops. On a scale of 1-10, I rate child birth as a 10 and this was going between an 8 and 9. I had pain that was creeping up my right side of my head and caused pain in the ear and nose and I couldn't concentrate on much as well.
I tried to go to sleep for the night and I just couldn't for the life of me. I tossed and turned all night long in between bathroom breaks and what not. Finally, I left my room around 2 am and started making some phone calls to get some answers. I called the hospital women's services to see if they could tell me what medicine to take and they said to try my OB so I called the main number again and went to an operator. She took down my info and told me I would get a phone call from the on call nurse within 40 minutes and I should call back if I don't. I waited an hour and decided I was too tired to call back so I lied down curled up in a blanket on the couch to try and get some much needed sleep. The good news is that I fell asleep for about a half an hour but then realized it was 5 in the morning and the kids would pummel me if I stayed on the couch so reluctantly, I moved to my bed again to try to sleep some more. It didn't work and I was still in terrible pain. I tried to do my normal routine with kids, but Jared stepped in to help feed them and get them occupied with things to help me out since I didn't seem to have things in order.
I called my dentist and left a message saying I was still interested in coming in soon because it was still painful and I didn't sleep all night long because of it. I got a hold of him around noon and he agreed to meet me at 2 pm. While I waited, I had to call my OB and find out what pain meds were okay to prescribe me. After convincing them of the urgency and calling back twice, I found out that I could have either Tylenol 3, Percoset or Loritab. I tried to work through the pain another couple hours and then it was answer time. I got x-rays taken and sure enough, the dentist told me I have an absyst (spelling) on the top of my roots on one of my teeth. For those who don't know, an absyst is a bacterial infection like a wound with puss and it looked like it had been developing for a month now and he was surprised I hadn't felt anything until now.
The game plan went as follows, he started the first step of a root canal to drain the absyst and place antibiotics up into the roots. However, we ran into a little snag because one of my two roots had become calcified and it didn't want to reopen to help clear out so my options are to try again with my dentist down the road or end up finishing with an oral surgeon. Either way, I'm pregnant so not much can be done, but I am glad that the pain is gone now and I'm taking antibiotics to help battle the infection. Hopefully all will work out between now and when the baby comes since anything major will have to wait. I only took one prescription pain med once to kick the pain and I've stuck to Tylenol the rest of the time which hasn't been very many.
Oh yeah, to top that all off, I have finally caught the cold bug going around again and now don't know if it's okay to take cold medicine on top of everything else. Whoa is me. You become so helpless when you are pregnant.
1 comment:
Thank you for reminding me yet again of another reason I am grateful to not be pregnant. By the way- it's 'abcess'. Billy has gotten a few. No fun. I've had to sleep with a mouthguard for my teeth clenching lately. It was never a problem before but the stress of life has been a little much as of late. You can get them over the counter. I wonder if it would help at least releive some of the pain. Good luck and hang in there!
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