Monday, November 22, 2004

11/22 Woe is my face

CAUTION: Do not read further if you are squeamish about blood, guts and entrails!

Okay, it's not quite that bad. I just got back from the dentist and my face hurts (I know, it's killing you). I have a temporary bridge in and will have it for about four weeks. We hope my permanent one will be ready before I go home for Christmas.

Turned out that my tooth was dead anyway, and it broke because it was dead--it didn't die because it broke, which was what I originally thought. And apparently an old crack in it caused the whole thing--a crack which appeared on my x-rays but never caused me any problem, so we let it go. I ended up with a really big abcess and it took a few hours to clean everything out. Hence my face pain right now.

He pulled the tooth, fixed the abcess, ground down the two other teeth a little, and then I was fitted with a temporary bridge.

What may be a wonderful byproduct of this is that three years ago I had horrendous face pain. I thought it had been caused by eating a frozen Snickers bar and cracking a tooth. (See where this is leading?) They did tooth xrays, an ENT doc did sinus xrays, an oral surgeon did TMJ xrays, and nothing showed up. But the whole side of my face hurt, and it was excruciating pain. The final diagnosis was some sort of nerve pain caused by one of my cranial nerves. And I've been on meds for three years.

Getting rid of the abcess might--just might--take care of all that pain and get me off those meds.

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