Thursday morning I (finally) got to go have the procedure on my tooth done.
I only say finally, because it seemed like a long time to put off having an abscess taken care of, but the endodontist went to many years of school to make these calls, so who am I to question it? It had actually stopped hurting, so I had a very slight hope that maybe it had gone away, but no such luck.
I had Steve drive me to the appointment because I requested having nitrous during the visit, and although I know I could probably drive home afterwards, I didn’t want to take a chance of being woozy and trying to drive. I was being conscientious, ok? Geez.
The procedure itself was uneventful, I suppose. I have only vague impressions of someone drilling into my jawbone, thank goodness. I guess it was pretty routine, except that he was only able to do half of it. I don’t know if it was worse than he thought, or if it’s normal to do this kind of thing in two visits (I get the rest of it done in July) but it took less than an hour to drill it, fill the abscess with medication, and slap some dental concrete on my crown and send me on my way. It didn’t even hurt that much, but then, half of my entire face was pumped full of the stuff that takes all the feeling away. Seriously, it was hours before I could feel my lips again! I was even able to go to a Trash Panda baseball game with Steve’s company before I started to feel any pain.
Oh, but the pain was waiting on me. Y’all…when my nerves recovered, I felt like I’d been punched repeatedly in the face. The doc prescribed pain meds, and even though they were the kind you have to show ID to get, they did nothing! I was hurting so badly. Friday and Saturday were spent just trying to manage it, and floating somewhere in a codeine haze. I feel like I must be a huge weenie dog because I can’t seem to get over the hump on this, but even today, Sunday, I woke up in enough pain to keep me home from church with my face on ice. I’m trying very hard not to take more of my pain meds than necessary. Opiates scare me, even the relatively weak ones I was prescribed, but I know I’ll need them at least once a day until they’re gone so I can function until this gets better, because I still feel like I was slammed face first into a wall.
Thankfully, I think it maybe getting a bit better. OTC stuff is helping more today, I think, but my face is also numb from the ice pack, so we’ll see! I hope it is, at least, because another month and a half of this without relief, and I will go insane AND I WILL TAKE YOU ALL WITH ME!
There is no clever way to end this entry. Just send my face some good vibes, if you don’t mind. ;)
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