How long is this supposed to hurt?

teriwtt
Sun, 19 Dec 2010 21:03:42 +0000

So I got home about 5AM and took a Tylenol #3 with instructions to take another one if I needed more relief within an hour. So I took another one around 6AM, and finally fell asleep for a couple of hours. My dentist appt. was at 10AM and back then, I had been told I had a mitral valve prolapse and needed to take prophylactic antibiotics an hour before any dental appts. I already had the penicillin at home and the prescribed dosing back then was 4 pills an hour to an hour and a half prior to the dental appt. So around 8:30AM, I asked H to go get my penicillin and bring it to me (I was still lying on the couch dozing off). I took the pills and we soon got into the car (D1 was about 10 months old) to go to the appt. On the way, I started to feel nauseous, but was sure it was due to not getting any sleep the night before and the pain. Sure enough, I threw up in the car as we pulled into the dentist’s parking lot. Made it into the appt., had the root canal done and when the dentist was giving me my follow up care instructions, she said the infection had been pretty bad, so she wanted me to stay on the penicillin. She asked me how many I had left (so she’d know how many she needed to prescribe me) and when I pulled out the bottle from my purse, I discovered that they were all still there. I was very confused, until I pulled out the Tylenol #3 bottle and saw that there were only two of the eight left! Yep, H had inadvertently given me four Tylenol #3 around 8:30AM instead of the penicillin. Which is also why I got so nauseous and threw up and was so out of it. Of course then I was worried because the dentist had just done this very invasive procedure on a very badly infected root, and I had not a pill of anything prophylactically in my system. So then I was convinced I was going to develop some sort of infection in my valve, AND I was afraid to go home and go to sleep (now that the pain was instantly gone because she’d removed all the root) because I wasn’t sure I would wake up with all that codeine in my system. Of course, I was young and stupid and naive at the time, and I did obviously survive the ordeal… I did wake up after a very long nap, and I did not get any sort of fatal valve infection in my heart, but it’s always been a good story to tell about my husband, the Ph.D. chemist! Thank God he’s not a pharmacist!

Years down the road, I was told the mitral valve prolapse was probably a misdiagnosis (it was the diagnosis du jour at the time), or I grew out of it, so I don’t have to worry about the penicillin any more, either.