Then I Took Down the Christmas Tree

The Saturday after Christmas (so December 26) I woke up in the middle of the night with jaw pain.

I’ve had fairly regular pain since August (September? Hell, I don’t know.) which is when I got four fillings in three corners of my stupid mouth. Remember that trip to the sketchy farm with the one-footed chicken? My jaw hurt then and it was about a week after my fillings.

So. I didn’t think much of it. I just took a couple of aspirin (ibuprofen, whatever, Jan) and went about my business.

But this time, the pain didn’t actually go away. It stuck around and got worse.

I muddled through the weekend and made my way to work on Monday and Tuesday. The pain wasn’t constant but it was definitely building. It was all along my lower left jaw and making its way toward my ear.

On Tuesday night around midnight, I got up and found some stronger pain meds, which helped me sleep. I decided I’d call the dentist the next day to see if they could fit me in and figure out what was going on.

At 6:30 the next morning I took another dose of the strong pain meds and went to work.

By the time I got to work, I was sick to my stomach. My jaw didn’t hurt as much, though. So…lose/win?

I went outside at 8:04 to call the dentist. I thought maybe being outside in the cold January air would help my nausea.

The dentist office was able to get me in at 8:30 that day. Yay?

The appointment took maybe seven minutes and cost $94 for the dentist to tell me I needed a root canal in my lower back molar. I’ve never had a root canal before so that was a daunting prospect.

Because this tooth is the farthest one back, the dentist gave me referrals to two endodontists. You know what means, right? It’s going to cost more! Yay specialists.

The dentist also gave me a prescription for antibiotics and strong pain meds (read: narcotics.) I went to Walmart to get these prescriptions filled. Check your local listings but the Walmart pharmacy in my area doesn’t open until 9:00am. I was at least 10 minutes early since my dentist appointment took less than twenty seconds and cost almost a hundred dollars.

Alas, the air inside Walmart isn’t as refreshing as the frigid January air in northeastern Indiana. So… I wanted around Walmart for five minutes and then had to make my leisurely way back to the restrooms because, hello narcotics on an empty stomach.

I’d been guzzling water all morning because I knew this was going to happen. Thank you eleventy million weeks of morning sickness.

I made it to the restroom and wouldn’t you know it? The only stall open was the middle one.

You know what’s grosser than throwing up in a Walmart bathroom? Throwing up in the middle stall of a Walmart bathroom while the ladies in the stalls on BOTH sides of you are taking massive dumps. There I was, yacking up all the water I’d drunk that morning and on both sides of me, BOTH, were the sounds of women shitting.

It was horrible as it sounds.

I cleaned myself up (physically, emotionally, I’m not sure I’ll ever feel clean again) and went to find the pharmacy open for business.

I didn’t get back to work until almost 10 that morning. I walked in and my boss, bless her, took one look at me and told me to go home. She also told me to take the next day, New Year’s Eve, off; which gave me a four and a half day weekend. Too bad I felt so bad, we could have partied hard.

Hahahaha. That’s funny.

I should have called the endodontist that day when I got home. Alas, instead I slept off and on in the heated recliner and wasted an entire day mourning my life choices.

I did call the next day, which was a Thursday for those not paying attention.

I called the place that had an office that has a twenty-nine minute drive from my office. They also have office that is a fifty-five minute drive from my office. This is pertinent information that will come into play later. The second endodontist has an office that is halfway between the two offices of the first endodontist, which is about a 35 minute drive from work.

The office that is closest to work only does the procedure I needed on Thursdays. They had an opening for a week later, on January 7, at 12:40. Did I want that appointment?

What do you think?

I took the appointment and prepared to suffer for seven more days. Oh, woe is me, I’m such a freaking martyr.

I figured out that taking a full pain pill every six hours was torture. But if I took half a pill every five hours, I got just enough pain relief to be semi-productive. By semi-productive I mean I was able to get laundry done, wash dishes as needed and cook food so that my family didn’t starve. But the vacuuming did not get done, the kitchen did not get swept, and I think Olivia might have been extra stinky because baths were not a priority unless they were my baths as I attempted to wash away my misery.

I managed to get through Monday and Tuesday at work but Wednesday brought the narcotic fog and residual pain in my stupid tooth.

I decided to go home early. As I was leaving work, my phone rang. It was the endodontist’s office. See, the closer office is actually in the same office as O’s orthodontist, who has offices in both Kendallville and Angola. We see him in the Angola office but have been to the Kendallville office once for Alyssa. So I knew where I was going to get my root canal. Except wait. No. There was a problem with the compressor at Dr. D’s office and so, if I wanted the root canal done the next day, I’d need to drive to the farther office, down on the south side of Fort Wayne. It could be at the same time, though. Yay.

Obviously, I acquiesced. What else was I going to do? Reschedule and suffer another week or more with the pain of the tooth and the awfulness that goes along with narcotics? No. I just couldn’t stare down another weekend of misery. So I accepted the appointment and went home

When I got home I went straight to bed where I slept soundly enough to dream for an hour and a half. As I wavered between sleep and waking, I felt someone leaning against the bed, as if they were leaning over me. I assumed it was Tom or Olivia and ignored them, pretending to be more asleep than I actually was. When I finally rolled over, no one was there.

Huh. Neither Tom nor Olivia will admit to coming up to see how I was doing. Alyssa said she locked my bedroom door to keep Liv out.

Double huh.

Finally, it was Thursday, January 7. I made it through the morning at work with not nausea because I didn’t take anything for pain that morning. I’m a slow learner, but I do learn. And guess what? I got to the appointment, got two extra shots of anesthetic (apparently, I’m a tough nut to numb) and then it was done. I was super numb but hey, that meant I wasn’t in pain.

When I got home that afternoon, I felt so much better I took down the Christmas tree.

Finally

Finally, I had a dentist appointment that did not lead to scheduling another appointment for fillings.

Ahh, the side effects of chemo that no one mentions: dry mouth and the cavities that come along as a result.

For what it’s worth, I never missed a cleaning while I was going through chemo. I mean, why would I? It wasn’t that big a deal.

But once chemo was over, I continued my regularly scheduled cleanings and all of a sudden, a year post-chemo, I started developing cavities. In the past year, I’ve had eight fillings, five of them in the backs of my top front teeth. Yikes!

I’d like to keep my teeth, please.

Then we all remember that one day I went in for two fillings and left with three. That was actually sort of traumatic, to be honest. I’m not sure why. I mean, I’m really good at telling myself that something unpleasant isn’t going to last forever but that session with the dentist reminded me of why dentists are often compared with sadists.

Alas, it did NOT last forever and I have moved on from the trauma as much as possible. How is it that I felt more traumatized by that hour in the dentist’s chair than I did by months of ultrasounds, biopsies, MRIs, x-rays, surgery, chemotherapy and radiation?

A little displaced angst, perhaps?

Open Wide

I had a dental cleaning last week. My teeth are, well, they’re fine, except when they’re not.

I was told at the cleaning that I needed fillings in two bottom teeth. The teeth are next to each other, the cavities were actually touching each other.

I know, gross.

I have a long history with bad teeth. My baby teeth were pretty much rotting out of my head. I blame uninformed parents who put Pepsi in my bottle when I was a baby. Again, GROSS!

My adult teeth aren’t quite that bad but I do confess that from about 16 until my mid-twenties, I did not see a dentist…ever.

When I was thirteen and a dentist told my dad that if he wanted me to be ‘pretty’ he could pay for braces but that would be the only reason to recommend orthodontic care at that point.

Do I need to tell you that my dad did not think I needed to be pretty?

But I digress.

When I started working in Chicago, my job offered excellent dental insurance and so I schlumped into a dentist’s office, all ashamed that I hadn’t had so much as a cleaning in about ten years. (Side note: I miss that excellent dental insurance. I no longer have dental insurance at all. The company for which I work will reimburse any employee who has company sponsored insurance up to $1000 a year for cleanings and work. That’s $1000 for the entire family, by the way. Guess who has already maxed out that little reimbursement plan?)

The dentist in Chicago was lovely. She was so kind and gentle and told me that shame was not necessary, that the last ten years no longer mattered because I was there and ready to get my teeth into shape.

It took some work, let me tell you. Several fillings and a crown later and I was referred to an orthodontist because apparently, orthodontic care is not just cosmetic. My teeth were so screwed up that I wasn’t keeping the backs of my top teeth clean with mere brushing.

Braces fixed that and my bite and here we are. I am proud to say that I haven’t missed a cleaning in all the years since I first started seeing my lovely dentists in Chicago. Yes, I still consider her MY dentist even though I haven’t seen her in almost twenty year.

When you start chemotherapy, they tell you that dry mouth might be a side effect. But they don’t tell you that cavities are a side effect of the dry mouth.

In the seventeen months since I finished chemo, I’ve had to get eight cavities filled.

EIGHT.

The first five, six months ago, were on the backs of three of my top front teeth. Yikes.

So I went in about five days after the cleaning to have those two cavities filled and hey, what do you know? The dentist, who wasn’t at the cleaning (he’d brought in a substitute dentist) last week, had come back and reviewed my x-rays and decided that not only did I need the cavities on the bottom left teeth filled but would you look at that, I needed a filling on a tooth on the top left too.

Whee!!! Let the games begin.

I hate fillings.

Who doesn’t, right?

I’m grown up, though. I can usually get through just about anything unpleasant because I can tell myself that it isn’t going to last forever.

This time, though, after the topical numbing and the shots, the dentist settled in with his drill and nope, I was still feeling that. Could we do something about the sensation of pain? That’d be great.

So he gave me another shot on the bottom and then started in on the top.

I clenched my fists and repeated silently, “It won’t last forever. It can’t last forever.”

I think tears actually trickled out the corners of my eyes.

At one point, the dentist took a little break from the drilling and grinding and pushing in my mouth and I was able to breath for a minute. My heart was racing and I was shaking.

I’ve never had that reaction before. It was awful.

I did get myself under control without having to leave the chair or even sit up but damn.

I feel for those who have panic attacks because this was a terrible feeling.

They finished up and I was released from the chair.

I got back to work about 12:30 and by 3:30, the bottom left of my mouth was still numb. But that Mexican pizza I got from Taco Bell at 12:25 was still delicious when I stuffed it in my numb face at 3:35, just managing to avoid chomping down on the inside of my left cheek.

My next cleaning is in February. Let’s see how many fillings I’ll need then. On the bright side, the $1000 reimbursement plan will have started over by then. Wonder how fast I can go through it in 2020.