I have been going to a student dental clinic for my dental work. The students are closely supervised by very competent professional dentists and the work is done at a significant discount (even cheaper than my dental insurance discount normally provides).
The daughter of a good family friend is in her third of four years of dental school there and I like giving her the experience of working on my teeth. She is very conscientious and has proven herself to be quite skilled.
She put a beautiful gold crown on my upper, right, rear-most tooth (#2 for you dental-philes) and it worked quite well. And then a root canal to prepare for another crown on a tooth on the lower left (tooth #19). To avoid using the temporary filling that awaits the new crown I shifted the majority of my food-chewing to the right side of my mouth, using my beautiful new gold crown. But it turns out that that tooth was just not used to such heavy use (I forgot to mention that I had a temporary crown on #2 for about 2.5 years, and during that time I mostly avoided using it very much).
My golden tooth started to act up on a Monday, giving me some mild pain that gradually grew in intensity over several days. By that Friday I knew I needed some help because I definitely felt pain when I bit down hard on that tooth. Cold water made it feel better, and hot water made it hurt tremendously -- a sign of pulpitis (inflamation of the nerve tissue inside the tooth).
So on that Friday I went to the clinic and the supervisor decided that the crown had high spots that had resulted in the inflamation. My student dentist ground the high spots down while I squeezed tightly the arm-rests. I left there hopeful that Ibuprofen and rest would let the tooth feel better within the promised 24 hours.
But by Saturday my tooth hurt so badly that simply touching it gently with the tip of my tongue caused a very high level of pain. I placed a rubber block on the left side of my mouth to bite down on so that I could avoid letting the right tooth make contact with anything. A call to the dental student for help yielded a prescription for narcotic pain pills. The pills went fast as the pain grew worse and worse. I could not sleep for more than two hours at a time because my cheek pressing on the tooth resulted in throbbing, wakening, break-through pain.
By Monday I was outta pills and barely hanging on until our 1pm appt. I was quickly taken upstairs for an emergency root-canal. They drilled through the beautiful golden crown and found infected material (it never sounds great to hear someone say they see puss when looking into your mouth, but somehow those words gave me some hope of relief). They fully expected a nearly complete end to my pain. But when the one-hour-pain-shot wore off the post-grad root-canaler wasn't quite finished with his packing of the tooth. He was astonished to hear that I had pain. He got me Ibuprofen and said that if I experienced any excruciating pain later I should call and they would give me a script for narcotic pain pills. I explained in very blunt terms, sounds, and gestures that I was indeed right then and there having excruciating pain and they needed to do something to help me right then. The whole floor of dentists were baffled at my lack of relief. I was not baffled -- I was insane with pain. So another pain shot and more drilling and more puss removal, packing of the tooth, and I was sent on my way with another script for pain pills.
Before I got home the pain shot wore off and I cussed and held my face all the way home. I paced and kicked and hit things to distract myself from the feeling of a hot knife being shoved into my gums. Taking the pain pills two at a time to kill the pain made my mouth happy but my stomach protested and I vomited several times.
By Tuesday I started antibiotics (prescribed by my general practitioner, as the dental supervisor didn't think it was necessary) and by Thursday I was able to go up to nine hours between pain pills.
Today, Friday, I think I am truly past the worst of it and on the way to a full recovery. I have a fun story of misery to tell and new-found appreciation for good teeth, and for those poor souls who suffer high levels of pain.
The daughter of a good family friend is in her third of four years of dental school there and I like giving her the experience of working on my teeth. She is very conscientious and has proven herself to be quite skilled.
She put a beautiful gold crown on my upper, right, rear-most tooth (#2 for you dental-philes) and it worked quite well. And then a root canal to prepare for another crown on a tooth on the lower left (tooth #19). To avoid using the temporary filling that awaits the new crown I shifted the majority of my food-chewing to the right side of my mouth, using my beautiful new gold crown. But it turns out that that tooth was just not used to such heavy use (I forgot to mention that I had a temporary crown on #2 for about 2.5 years, and during that time I mostly avoided using it very much).
My golden tooth started to act up on a Monday, giving me some mild pain that gradually grew in intensity over several days. By that Friday I knew I needed some help because I definitely felt pain when I bit down hard on that tooth. Cold water made it feel better, and hot water made it hurt tremendously -- a sign of pulpitis (inflamation of the nerve tissue inside the tooth).
So on that Friday I went to the clinic and the supervisor decided that the crown had high spots that had resulted in the inflamation. My student dentist ground the high spots down while I squeezed tightly the arm-rests. I left there hopeful that Ibuprofen and rest would let the tooth feel better within the promised 24 hours.
But by Saturday my tooth hurt so badly that simply touching it gently with the tip of my tongue caused a very high level of pain. I placed a rubber block on the left side of my mouth to bite down on so that I could avoid letting the right tooth make contact with anything. A call to the dental student for help yielded a prescription for narcotic pain pills. The pills went fast as the pain grew worse and worse. I could not sleep for more than two hours at a time because my cheek pressing on the tooth resulted in throbbing, wakening, break-through pain.
By Monday I was outta pills and barely hanging on until our 1pm appt. I was quickly taken upstairs for an emergency root-canal. They drilled through the beautiful golden crown and found infected material (it never sounds great to hear someone say they see puss when looking into your mouth, but somehow those words gave me some hope of relief). They fully expected a nearly complete end to my pain. But when the one-hour-pain-shot wore off the post-grad root-canaler wasn't quite finished with his packing of the tooth. He was astonished to hear that I had pain. He got me Ibuprofen and said that if I experienced any excruciating pain later I should call and they would give me a script for narcotic pain pills. I explained in very blunt terms, sounds, and gestures that I was indeed right then and there having excruciating pain and they needed to do something to help me right then. The whole floor of dentists were baffled at my lack of relief. I was not baffled -- I was insane with pain. So another pain shot and more drilling and more puss removal, packing of the tooth, and I was sent on my way with another script for pain pills.
Before I got home the pain shot wore off and I cussed and held my face all the way home. I paced and kicked and hit things to distract myself from the feeling of a hot knife being shoved into my gums. Taking the pain pills two at a time to kill the pain made my mouth happy but my stomach protested and I vomited several times.
By Tuesday I started antibiotics (prescribed by my general practitioner, as the dental supervisor didn't think it was necessary) and by Thursday I was able to go up to nine hours between pain pills.
Today, Friday, I think I am truly past the worst of it and on the way to a full recovery. I have a fun story of misery to tell and new-found appreciation for good teeth, and for those poor souls who suffer high levels of pain.
1 comment:
Hope by now you are feeling good again. Wow! What an experience. It will be a great day when there is an objective method for measuring someone else's pain so care givers can appreciate what one is going through. Thanks for writing about it and for the note and pictures on Walker too.
love, Dad
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