#18

In the summer of 2004, while biting into a peice of coffe cake, I lost a filling. It had been in #18 for twenty years at least. Then it and part of the tooth around it was gone. The gap felt like a small grand canyon to my everprobing tounge.
I went to my Dentist and she used 8 little tubes of gunk to fill it up. The lost filling exposed the upper most level of the pulp of the tooth.

In mid summer 2005, the tooth began aching a bit. Not much just a localised pain that I muddled through with. Then I went and had #18 filled in a different location. The pain went away...for a while...

Last month a different pain started. This pain wasn't aywhere near #18. It was dull pain infront of my left ear. The pain would come and go every day or so. I muddled through with it taking tylenol or advil. Then one day last week, near the end of my shift, the pain began to evolve into an intense, stabbing, pain as if someone had first stabbed my temple with a 6 gauge hypo, injected a gallon of pain inducing stuff, then topped it off by slamming a baseball bat into my head. The pain lasted for 15 minutes then died down to a dull ache that felt like someone had...well... slammed a baseball bat into my head.

In 20 to 30 minutes the pain was back. For the next 48 hourse my trigeminal nerve was going bananas. Tylenol, advil, even codine, offered no relief, not even a little. I can't tell you the dismay I got when, after injesting, two advil, two tylenol, and two codine all at once, the pain was as intense as if I had taken nothing at all.

The pain was so bad I could not sit or lay down. I had to move, pace back and forth, as if part of my brain was trying to runaway from the pain. I ended up going to the ER and the doctor there diagnosed me with Trigeminal Neuralgia. He gave me Tegretol, which in higher doses is used to stop siezures, and that finally cut the pain back to the baseball bat level. Reading up on the disorder was depressing. TN according to the TN support website (you know a disorder is bad when it has its own support web pages) I learned the pain of "Trigeminal neuralgia (TN) is not fatal, but it is universally considered to be the most painful affliction known to medical practice."

Holy crap I can vouch for that. I know that I have never had a pain like it. Dual dry sockets after wisdom teeth extraction was a cake walk to this. Internal bleeding into a knee joint is like cotton candy. The closest I can get is imagine your head between I-5 and a Semi-Truck just before it is crushed. That is sort of like it without the mess.

After taking the Tegretol for a day the pain was much better. By Saturday morning however the pain was back but now was entirely localised under #18. As if it was hiding out under the unrully molar. So I opted to get the @#$ing tooth yanked out of my head and hopefully be done with the pain.

As I sat at the emergency dental office, an office that used to be the locatin of my childhood pediatrician, the words of my current PCP haunted me. "A lot of people get their teeth pulled out before they learn what the disease is. They get them pulled only to have the pain persist." Well I was hoping that the molar was the poblem.

An hour later I walked out of the office, face numbed up, #18 still in my head but now mangled like Freddy, or Jason, or the Texas Chain Molar Massacre. The dentist could not dislodge the tooth. Sunday came and went and it was not a bad day. The whole face felt not too bad. Of course that was probably due to taking 2 percocets every 3 hours. But the nerve pain was gone, because the perc's would not have touched that kind of pain. Sunday night the pressure began to come back and, like before, the normal meds did nothing for it. By this time I was taking Pennicilian too.

Monday I finally went to a oral surgeon and he, in 5 minutes, rid me of the molar. I felt really bad about it. Like part of me was now gone, mainly because it was gone. I was also pissed becasue until that day I had all my teeth. I didn't take care of my teeth much as a kid. But as an adult I brush regularly and have not had a toothache it 20 some years. Even though I admit that my dental visits have been but two in the last 14 years. Today, Teusday, I have a bloody hole in my mouth, the pressure pain is dull and, I think, going down. I really hope this does the trick. I can't imagine how pissed off I will be if the pain comes back and I am missing a tooth that didn't have to go.

I stopped the Tegretol too. According the MERK book that could cause severe side effects like me turning into a republican or something, but I seem to be fine. I will keep you posted on what happens now that #18 is gone.