when it rains, it pours

Has anyone ever considered just how true that saying is: when it rains, it pours?

Well, it certainly seems to be true for my life. This year has been an endless roll of small (and some large) disasters. Ranging from family drama to petty illness to please-just-kill-me sickness. 

I use to think that I had high pain tolerance, I've quickly learned that's simply not true. The only thing I have pain tolerance for is the asthma stuff. Give me an 89 pulse ox, crazy cough, wheezes on the inhale and exhale and I can take it. Give me the flu, a sore throat, and a toothache... please just shoot me. 

Once I had finally fully recovered from that terrible bout of the flu and pneumonia I had a tooth start bothering me. It's one that's been on my list of things to get done for a while. All of the prednisone/steroids I've been on in my life have effected my teeth. And my bones. I discovered a few years back that I have low bone density. My teeth sort of crack easily. I had a tooth that had been cracked. So... they did the usual filling thing. Well, after it had been filled it started bothering me a lot. I had extreme sensitivity in it to pressure and to cold things. 

I went to the dentist over it like 4 times. He kept thinking it was caused by him not having filed it down far enough so he kept filing it down. Without numbing me. I left there teary eyed on multiple occasions. And in a very I'm-gonne-kill-that-dentist mood. After the last time of going, I decided to stop going. What was the sense? He wasn't doing anything to fix it and he was only putting me in more pain. 

We'd had a few discussions about doing a root canal, since he'd discovered the nerve in that tooth came up a little high and the filling he'd placed seemed to be sitting on the nerve. But, it never went any further than talk.

The pressure sensitivity eventually lessened. Not much, I haven't chewed anything crunchy on that side in 6 months. 

To wrap that all up: despite his efforts, the tooth never really stopped hurting.

Last Thursday I noticed a more distinguished pain in the tooth. It bothered me, but I tried to ignore it. Friday it started to magnify more. Enough that I started complaining about it to people. Then I woke up at like 12:30am Saturday with the kind of pain that made me pray for Jesus to either take it or take me. The pain radiated throughout that whole side of my mouth, through m jaw, even up in my ear. For two days, I'm not even sure I could have pinpointed which tooth it was anymore. Because all of them on that side of my mouth hurt, on the top and bottom! What's that called? Sympathy pain or sister pain or something? It's stupid whatever it is. It was a stabbing, terrible throb that was relentless. I was immediately in tears. I got up in search of something to ease it, but had little aid for that sort of pain in my house. I settled for Ibuprofen and rinsing out my mouth with peroxide - that's what they'd told me to do for the wisdom teeth, so I thought it'd help. 

From then on I woke up about every hour until 7:00 when I decided I'd go to Walmart and get some things. I got several different oral anesthetics and some more OTC pain meds. For the record, on top of all those I got the best 'oral anesthetic' I got was Listerine. Yep. I read some things about slighting warming it and then swishing it and holding it in your mouth near the area of pain. It hurts like hell every time it first touches it, but then it just numbs it a bit. The best relief I had out of all those products.

When I got home I broke down into another crying spell, which compelled the hubs enough to call the emergency number for our dentist. 

No answer. *growls*

About an hour later he calls back. Maybe he pulled my chart or remembered me or something, but he seemed certain that the tooth was dying and abscessed. He called me in some ridiculously strong antibiotics to take three times a day and the good pain killers. The kind that I usually won't touch, but was so happy to get. 

I probably killed my liver over the weekend. Taking the 800mg of ibprofen every 4 hours on top of the oxycodone (docs orders and permission, I didn't take it upon myself to just do that). Pain pills have never bothered me, I just never like resorting to them. The only time I've ever taken them in my life was when I broke my pelvis and then I took them a few days after getting all four wisdom teeth cut out.

Today's the first time I haven't cried since Friday... so I guess that's improvement, right? It's more of a dull, consistent throb today. Still terrible. 

I hate, hate, hate toothaches. And for it to radiate up into my ear like that... gah! Toothache and earache! The two worse kinds of pain... in my opinion. 

Dentist can't touch it until infection's gone... let's hope this gets resolved soon. My irritability is a little too high.