I’m Abscessed With You!

Last week Wednesday was the start of the most pain I have felt in a very long time. The day actually began rather well. I went into dispatch to do some offline work and then I attended a business meeting that turned out to be pretty big for my new company, Martinez Design Concepts LLC. I was pretty stoked at the turn out and the connections I made. On my way home one of my teeth on the bottom right side started to hurt. It wasn’t too bad and of course, everyone has gone through a minor toothache so I didn’t think much of it. On Thursday my tooth continued to hurt but I went into work and continued taking Tylenol like Skittles. The pain kept coming and going and I was brushing like mad and rinsing as much as I could.

When Friday morning came around, I decided to call my dentist to see me for a possible abscessed tooth. I went in and sure enough it was an abscess and I needed an emergency root canal. I was relieved that we would be able to take care of it on that day but no one was available to do it. An appointment was made for the following Thursday and I was sent on my way with prescriptions for Penicillin and some Tylenol 3’s. The pain persisted throughout the day and got worse. I went to work and while I was there I noticed that the bottom right side of my face began to swell. Around midnight or so I could no longer take the pain and rushed to the nearest E.R.

Once I got there I noticed the funny looks from those who saw or spoke to me. I realized that my swelling was more obvious than before. When the doctor came in to see me she began pressing against my face. It hurt like you wouldn’t believe. I laid back and she looked in and began pressing and pushing against my gums and that hurt even more. She was looking for a pocket of some sort to drain from but couldn’t find a good enough spot.

Once again I was sent home with an anti-biotic and some painkillers but one of them I was able to get before I left the E.R. Now, when the doc told me that she could give me a shot of something, I thought she just meant a dose, in pill form. Nope! This was literally a shot and one that was to go in my rear! The nurse walks in and says,

“Ok, I have your prescriptions ready and now for the painkiller.”

I was surprised to see the shot in her hand so I began to roll up my sleeve.

“No, no. Um…this goes in your rear. Here’s a blanket so you can pull everything down.”

I was immediately embarrassed that I had to drop everything and she leaves so that I can do so. I unzip, drop and sit on the bed. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that she needed everything down. She opens the door and looks at me and says,

“Um…you still have your underwear on right?”

“No, you said everything down.”

“Oh…well that’s not what I meant. Pull everything back up.”

I laughed inside and thought, “I knew she only needed one cheek!”

She comes in, tells me to lie on the bed, I supply one cheek and she hits me with the shot. It hurt like hell but it took the pain away. Sheesh…how embarrassing it was. I’m sure when she first opened the door I looked like I was ready to take a dump on the bed seeing how everything was down. Argh!

From there I went back to work but went home early. The next morning my face had swelled up to the picture included in this post. The pain was unbearable but luckily a friend of mine suggested a dentist office that works over the weekend. Between Saturday and today, I have been to that dentist trying to get the swelling down. Today I felt pain I have never experienced before. It wasn’t childbirth but it might as well have been. Since the swelling was taking longer to go down, they decided to cut me open in order to drain what was inside. They numbed me up with three shots to the gums. It worked rather well but I could partially feel what they were doing. They used three different scalpels during this procedure. I felt when they hit pockets of infection and what made it worse was hearing the scalpel cut through the tissue. Imagine cutting up ribs or better yet, the cartilage part of chicken. That’s what it sounded like. During the procedure they even hit me with another shot before taking a break and I could feel the needle go into the wound.

After that I couldn’t feel a thing. Thank God for that because I was breathing so hard from what I was feeling earlier that I probably would’ve passed out. The incisions remain open to drain but since they are superficial wounds, the dentist said that they would heal over within six hours. Now I’m home and typing up this post. Never have I been through so much pain. Having to be cut open blew but if it’s going to help out my situation then I’m all about it. I still haven’t had my root canal but it’s only because of all this other crap that happened. It has to heal for a couple weeks before they can do it and the swelling might stay for a month or so. It all sucks but I’m hanging in there. So really, the moral of this story is,

TAKE CARE OF YOUR STUPID TEETH OR LEARN THE HARD WAY!