ouch

I feel like someone punched me in the face today. Fortunately that did not happen, I merely had a root canal.  After the last few days when the pain radiated clear to my shoulder and I took contra-band (not supposed to take with lithium and especially now because my level is up) ibuproferon because nothing else helped, I was pretty sure that nothing the dentist did could top that pain.  And I was right, but I am sore.

Last week he told me that since this tooth was already crowned that he would go in through the crown and that it would or wouldn't survive the procedure.  He also said that if the tooth was in too bad of a condition from the deep crack it already that I would have to have it pulled.  So obviously the best possible scenario was that I would leave with a crowned tooth and no need for a new crown.

When I got there and told him about the pain he started tracing the swelling and the pocket of nastiness under my gum.  He did the drilling, which is unpleasant sounding going through metal and porcelain (you can hear bits fly off and the drill is slowed by the materials so it sounds really ominous) and found what he had expected and hoped for (although not the least painful scenario).  2 of my tooth's roots had simply died.  The last was putting up a valiant fight and so it was infected, swollen, and very irritated.  In fact it was irritated enough that I kept needing more and more numbing and there are limits to how much of that I can have with the MAOI.  Finally he said that we had about 20 minutes before I felt pain and he was going to get it done.  He did and then they put a filling on the top of the crown and gave me antibiotics and painkillers (this was partly because of the holiday and partly because of how irritated it already was in there; usually you get out of these things).

The pharmacy was a bad experience. First someone made a left turn into it in front of me and didn't pull all the way into the parking lot to let someone out.  I was stuck blocking the traffic in a busy, fast area of town.  I honked; they ignored me.  I honked again, twice.  They let someone pull out in front of them.  I was less than pleased. They didn't ask if i was staying, just said 25 minutes.  I got bored and went back to the pharmacy where they had my antibiotics but no painkillers.  They said they were out of the dose of vicodin I was given but I could have some tomorrow after 3.  Out of my drooling, drooping mouth I pointed out that I had about 30 minutes until it hurt a lot and that it would be best if I had pain meds now and asked them to transfer it to across the street.  Lo and behold someone found vicodin for me but they made me wait another 15 minutes.  I couldn't figure out why nobody paged me in the beginning to explain the situation and fix it immediately.  For some reason they chose to call my cell phone instead of looking for me in the store and since my phone was in the car I didn't get the call.  It was really annoying since it should have been rapidly resolved and they should have checked "the back" before saying they didn't have any.

So I got home and slept most of the afternoon and have been trying to distract myself from the pain for a couple hours.  It's not terrible, in many ways not as bad as the last 2 days were, but my gums are really irritated from the infection and dental tools and the swelling makes it hard to not bite down on the tooth which is a little elevated right now.  But I just realized that I forgot to take more vicodin and I've been due for a while so that would be the reason it hurts.

I am just so glad that this is over and that I still have a tooth. I am newly on dental insurance and couldn't have work covered until April so this is all out of pocket.  I'm so glad I'm not paying for a crown as well.