I’m feeling much better now. This morning I was in the worst kind of pain I’ve ever been in my life. The swelling was at it’s worse, I had a huge migraine, a fever that was making me shiver almost spasmically, and I felt completely sapped of energy or a will to even breath. I was told that it’d be easier to go through labor than go through an abcess tooth again. I believe that — easily. I went to the clinic down the road this morning at 9:30, but unfortunately, which we found out later, the doctor wasn’t even in yet. He didn’t even get in until 12:00 noon. I had to endure 2 hours of the most nerve-wracking pain, sitting in a hot car, sweating and shivering at the same time, trying to ignore the uncomfortable stares from people seeing my swollen face.
It was almost a fruitless visit though, as when I went in, the doctor realizing he had a jam-packed clinic filled with people needing to see him, he was in a hurry to go through everyone. I heard someone got mad and yelled at the nurses, and I was welling up in anger from all the pain and waiting myself, and was about to throw a tantrum, which I rarely ever ever do. The doctor looked at me, saw I had a fever, and I told him, as best as I could through the limited speech I had, that I was in an immense amount of pain. He prescribed me two different antiobiotics, which I’m grateful for. He also prescribed me Ultracet, which I just knew somehow that it wasn’t going to be strong enough, but I figure I’ll have faith in the doctor and try it.
I took it, and yet after 2 hours, the pain wasn’t dulled by any miniscule amount. I had a fit and my roommate called the doctor to tell him I needed something stronger, but they put us on hold for over 45 minutes. So she decided to run up there and confront him in person about it. Needless to say, the doctor was gracious about it and prescribed me Vicodin, which I had the roommate point out to him, was the only thing that seemed to have helped drive the pain away. Now I’m in a much better mood, listening to Gatecrasher chillout ambient trance, with only a dull throbbing headache to annoy me right now. I can handle that. I’m also hoping I’ll get some good sleep tonight too.
I had a tooth abscess about 3 years ago and it was excruciating. My face hadn’t swollen up and when the Dentist was looking couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, then he decided to push down on the tooth that had caused the abscess at which point it felt like I flew up in the air about 10 feet and had to be taken out of the room by Mother as I was crying so much.
They did an x-ray and it turned out that the abscess was running the whole length of my jaw line on the left hand side instead of puffing up as they usually do. They decided to take the problem tooth out as I was so desperate to have the pressure released and I didn’t want to go home with a week’s worth of anti-bio. Problem was that as the abscess surrounds the root the injections (all 7 of them) didn’t deaden it. In the end it took my Mother and a Nurse to hold me down as they yanked it out.
Oy! I’m in pain just reading about your experience. My friend went through the same thing you did. She had multiple shots to deaden the pain, but nothing worked. I hope it never comes down to that for me. I had someone tell me she would rather go in labor again than go through an abscess tooth. Scary.
I just that desperate to get the blinking tooth out. If you’ve had antibiotics they’ll be able to sort your tooth out with very little discomfort. They don’t always remove the tooth but with mine the filling had gone in so deeply that they felt the abcess would keep re-occuring.
My Mother still re-tells the story!
That’s nothing. My roommate took a picture with my digital camera of my face when I was sleeping in the morning, and I looked like Mike Tyson punched me after I tried to bite his ear.
And no I’m not going to post the picture on the internet — I love humanity, not hate it. ;)