Holy Tooth Ache, Batman!

I would like to start with the fact that tooth aches can kiss my arse!

Anyway, on Monday night I went to bed with a slight ache on the lower right side of my mouth. I have a tooth, second from the back, that was crowned about 3 years ago. The ache was bugging me, but I really didn't think much of it. I tried to ignore it and went to bed. Through out the night I was awoken by the tooth ache and just tried to focus on other things and go back to bed. Well, by 4:30 am I had enough and went to go take a shower and take some advil. I got out of the shower and started getting ready and that's when the pain became unbearable. Like, crying, shaking and writhing on the floor unbearable. Well after about 10 minutes of this agony, the pain killers finally kicked in. They didn't completely take the pain away, but they dulled it enough to where I could call in sick for work and climb back into bed.

I had my normal dentist cleaning scheduled for the next day, so when I went back to bed I thought maybe I could tough it out until my appointment. I woke up at about 9am with a little pain, but not bad enough that I couldn't eat some cereal. I finished my bowl and the agony set in again. I rushed to the bathroom to take more advil but knew it would be 15 minutes before it took affect. So again, the writhing in pain thing. Not fun. I called up the dentist and described my excruciating ordeal and they said the earliest they could get me in was 10:30am the next day. Lovely. So then through out the day I had to continue to take 2 advil every 2 hours just to keep the pain at bay. And there were times within that 2 hour window that the pain would briefly resurface and send me into hysterics. And if I didn't down another advil in time, I would be in complete agony until the new pain killers kicked in.

Finally at 9pm I was ready for bed and I took 3 advil in hopes that I'd maybe get 3 hours of sleep before waking up to the feeling of someone stabbing 100 needles directly into the nerve of my tooth. So, from 4:30am to 9:00pm, I had ingested 16 advils and had essentially been in pain all day long. I did pretty well last night and slept from 9:30 until about 2:30am. Got up immediately and downed another 2 advil. The pain was really bad this time because it had been too long since my last dose and so I didn't get back to sleep until almost 4:00am. Then, I was up again around 6:00am, took another 2 advil, but was still in tears and near hysterics from the pain. After about 20 minutes of thrashing in bed from the agony, I feel back to sleep until about 9:15. And then, you guessed it, took another 3 advil, took a shower and got ready for my dentist appointment. This time it seemed as though the advil had no effect whatsoever and I was in tears and shaking on the way to the dentist. I told them to screw the cleaning and get right to work fixing my tooth.

They took an x-ray and sure enough there was an abscess on one of the roots of my crowned tooth. Then they told me they were short staffed and weren't quite sure whether they could work on me today. I almost lost it. Luckily, they worked it out and the next thing I knew they were numbing me. SWEET BLISS!!! I didn't care that I couldn't feel half of my face, for the first time in about 30 hours I didn't feel like ripping all my teeth out. It was heaven. At this point they could have done whatever they wanted to my teeth and I would have conceded without a second thought.

The dentist got to work quickly on the root canal. He drilled a hole through the crown and then cleaned out the roots of my tooth. I didn't feel a thing and it was heavenly. Within an hour he was done. I was prescribed an antibiotic and some vicadin just in case I experience some pain from the procedure. Although I have to go back next week to finish up and to get the permanent filing in my crown, I am so happy. It is now 5:15pm and I haven't had any pain or any advil. There's a little soreness from where they poked me, but it is really nothing at all. I never thought I could be so happy about a root canal. The root canal was easy, it was the 2 days leading up to it that was the worst pain I've ever experienced in my life!