I am determined I am going to try and blog more. Maybe not every day but every few days to weeks. I am so horrible at it sometimes. I know I am not the only one but it sometimes bugs me. I have been sick for the last two weeks and have been off at home after a tooth extraction gone wrong. I was too sick to do much but lay on the couch but today I am feeling a slight bit better though I still have to rest and try and get rid of the Infection (more about that in a moment) but because I am feeling a tiny bit better I decided to work on a few projects.

I finally got my mom’s website ABC Transcription Services set up on WordPress. I created the site a while ago from scratch but just didn’t have the time this summer to integrate it into a WordPress theme for a site she already had set up in WordPress through me. I finally did that and am pretty happy with the end result and so is she. I am really quite proud of myself. On top of that, I decided to get serious about hosting and design a created a new website for myself KC Hosting and Design and registered a domain name for it and now it is up and running now as well!

Now on to the tooth extraction. Two weeks ago I had a root canal fail and the cap (crown?) fall out after eating something. The following day I went to the dentist in Kentville an hour and a half each way from my house before work. I ended up calling in sick as I had to have the tooth pulled and it was a very rough extraction with lots of Pain (they had to cut my gums in multiple places and I had a bunch of stitches as well) and swelling almost right away plus they said I had a pretty bad infection and put me on Amoxicillin.

They gave me 2 days off and I went back into work Wednesday and Thursday but by Friday I was in so much pain I was literally crying at work so I left and went back to the dentist. I got partway and had to call my mom to come to take me the rest of the way as I was feeling really horrible and felt like I might pass out. Obviously I didn’t want to take that chance behind the wheel and Eddie was at work so I pulled over.

They diagnosed me that day with a Dry Socket and said the infection was spreading but since I had a few days of Amoxicillin left to just keep on it and come back in 1-2 days if I was still having issues. Before going home they pulled out the stitches placed some bone graft material, and then the dry socket paste and left it open to control the pain and speed the healing. I made it through the rest of that day and the next but by Sunday the pain and swelling had spread further throughout the bottom of my jaw and cheek and up into my TMJ joint. I woke up Sunday morning with my eye almost swollen shut.

I went to the ER that morning in Annapolis alone. Eddie would have come with me but he had news the day before (Saturday) that his mother who his whole family had been estranged from for years had passed away the day before that (Friday). He was not feeling much like going with me and I was worried about him and wanted him to stay home and stay away from the ER so I went on my own. The ER doctor initially said that there was nothing really they could do for me other than write a few more days of Amoxicillin to cover me till I could get to the dental clinic on Tuesday as Monday was a holiday and they would not be open but he said I needed to be checked again by the dentist. He suspected that the infection might still be spreading underneath but on the surface, it looked ok but he was not convinced but had no way to really tell and I needed a dental x-ray which he could not do.

Just before leaving the ER he suggested that I might want to consider going or calling the ER in Kentville that same day (Sunday) to see if they could help me up there as it was a bigger ER and might be able to at least re-pack for the dry socket which is super painful on its own, never mind all the rest that was going on. I started home and called my mom and she called Kentville’s ER and they said I should come up and that they could help some. So by then I was exhausted and so she told me to go home, get a shower and she would pick me up in an hour or so. So we drove to Kentville ER later that same day.

We spent 4-5 hours in the ER that afternoon and early evening and finally saw a doctor who said they couldn’t actually do anything they said they could on the phone (this place is an hour and a half away) but the doctor took pity on me because he said he could see I was swollen, in pain and just feeling lousy and so he figured I needed a different antibiotic, a steroid for swelling and some anti-inflammatories to help get the infection and swelling and pain under control so he prescribed me Clindamycin, Prednisone, and Diclofenac and sent me home advising me to go to the dentist first thing on Tuesday morning. I already had Monday off due to the holiday so I texted my manager and told her what was going and she arranged for one of my co-workers to cover me for Tuesday and Wednesday in case as well.

On Tuesday I went back to Kentville again to the dentist again. They took more x-rays, said it looked like the infection was indeed spreading and not getting better and was now in my lymph nodes in my neck, my cheek and tissue surrounding the extraction site. They froze me, cut out some of the tissue, removed some fragments of bone that had come off or maybe it was part of the graft, not sure and basically made it bleed in the hopes that that would help speed the healing of both the infection, the inflammation, and the dry socket. It didn’t work

I was back again on Thursday and they decided to change my anti-biotics back to Amoxicillin, add a second anti-biotic Flagyl to cover all the bugs, since I was done the Prednisone at this point he added Dexamethasone which is another more potent steroid then Prednisone and told me to keep up with the Tylenol and Advil every 6 hours staggered (which I had been taking at this point since the day of the original extraction). Basically take one and three hours later the other and keep it going like that so that as one is at it’s peak you are talking the other so when the first wears off the second is starting to peak. They told me to come back Saturday for a follow-up.

On Saturday I came back and was still miserable, swollen and in pain and feeling really feverish, warn out and just sick as hell plus I was starting to experience a lot of numbness in my chin, cheek and the right side of my face. So I went back and they did another x-ray this time of the whole jaw and the dentist filling in said that it looked like the tooth that was extracted would have been really close to the nerve in my jaw which would explain the numbness. They were concerned that either during the initial extraction or when they debrided it a few days later when I had the dry socket or a few days after that when the cleaned and restitched it that they might have bruised or otherwise damaged the nerve in my jaw running through the area. He also questioned a spot that looked like it could have been a slight jaw fracture so he said he wanted me back on Monday morning (yesterday) to see a specialist in the clinic.

I went back yesterday and they removed the stitches again because it’s still not healing at all and is wide open to the jaw bone and so they cleaned it, packed it again with the same stuff they use for the dry socket and he gave me a prescription for Tylenol 3 for 3 days as I am not sleeping and just in a ton of pain still. At night laying flat back or on either side just causes immense pain. He said that he was going to be writing up a referral to the oral and maxillofacial surgery department at the VG and also call them yesterday or today to run it by them anyways to see what they said. I never heard from them so I am guessing they said to wait and see for another couple days.

So now I am waiting to see what happens from here. I am hoping it is starting to heal but not sure if it’s just some of the pain meds covering up some of the pain and the steroid covering up some of the swelling. I am still swollen despite all this and still in a considerable amount of pain so I guess the next few days will be the deciding factor. I don’t go back to work at this point until Friday so I still have tomorrow and Thursday off. Hopefully, I will not have to go back but I am concerned what happens when I run out of meds. Is it going to start hurting again and is the infection getting better or still spreading?

I hope I don’t have to go back and can return to work Friday but at this point, I just don’t know. I now have to start a short term disability claim at work because of the number of days I’ve been off. Something I have never had to do through them before. It’s so frustrating. I question too if all of this could have been avoided had the dentist not pulled the tooth two weeks ago on the day I came in and instead put me on antibiotics for a week and just packed what was left of the tooth and pulled it like a week later. I am not sure if that would have made a difference. I honestly don’t know. All I know is I hope it doesn’t keep heading in the wrong direction as it has been. It’s put my blood sugars through the roof because I have been on steroids, have an infection and also am on a soft food diet.

I am so ready for this to be over and to start feeling well. I don’t think Candy Cane Lane Festival is going to happen Saturday as I mentioned in my last post about our new car.