How long is this supposed to hurt?

DonnaL
Sun, 19 Dec 2010 03:53:46 +0000

Thanks for all the helpful advice.

I haven’t tried calling the dentist yet because I really haven’t been sufficiently awake since Friday to do so. I went to sleep Friday night about 10 pm, with the aid of some klonipin and a lot of advil, and without having anything to eat, and slept for about 18 hours until 4 pm on Saturday – not counting the several times I was dreaming that my mouth hurt and woke up to discover that it was, unfortunately, real! At one point I persuaded J. that I didn’t need him to stay with me and he could go off to meet a friend and then go back to NJ to my ex’s house. He did go out and buy me some water, though, which was nice of him.

When I finally woke up at 4 pm, I noticed that the pain had decreased – instead of hurting all the time, it was now only a twinge of pain every so often. I even was able to eat a little bit (the first food I’d had in almost 48 hours) with hardly any pain. Then, naturally, I went back to sleep at 6 pm for another 7 hours, and woke up at 1 am. Still not really hungry, so I haven’t eaten anything else. But the pain seems to be largely gone. I thought maybe my glands were a little swollen under that part of my jaw, but maybe not.

So it looks like maybe it was all just residual pain from the filling after all. Unusual, perhaps, but then again, I’ve had so many doctors tell me things like “that’s very unusual; we’ve never seen anything like that before,” when I have one complication or another, that nothing of this kind surprises me anymore. It’s a little depressing to think that I’m that vulnerable to medical complications and difficult recoveries, even from an inconsequential little filling of a cracked tooth, never mind what happens to me every time I have anything resembling major surgery of any kind. But it’s not surprising. So I try not to let it bother me too much, or I’d be completely non-functional by now.

I think the dentist suggested doing the filling without novocaine because from her viewpoint, all she had to do was take off a couple of layers of enamel, and why not wait to see if it hurt before administering anything. I declined because I have no objection whatsoever to painkillers (the more the better!), and the one time I did try to let her do something like that without novocaine it was so immediately and excruciatingly painful that I almost jumped out of my chair. No thank you; once was enough to try anything like that!

It wasn’t the pain from the root canal I was concerned about, btw; the “ugh” was the thought of how much time it would take, and, possibly, how many appointments I’d have to make requiring me to take partial days off from work. I already get enough comments from the people I work for to the effect of “you’re sick more than anyone I’ve ever heard of; you take more sick days than anyone; I have health problems of my own and I haven’t missed a day of work in 20 years,” etc., etc., etc. I don’t enjoy hearing that kind of thing. I’m not a malingerer.

I just hope I feel well enough tomorrow (I mean later today!), and the pain continues to be sufficiently diminished, that I can get at least some of the work done that I simply couldn’t do on Friday because my tooth hurt so much, and so continuously, that I couldn’t think straight.

Maybe my appetite will even return. I feel like I’ve barely eaten anything since this all started nearly two weeks ago. A great way to lose weight, I suppose, if that were something I wanted to do.

Maybe I won’t even need to call the dentist before Monday, if at all.

Time to go back to sleep!