Sudo Get Me A Xanax

On 06.30.10, In Heart, By admin

Well, ended up back at the ER for chest pain, yesterday. They put me back in the hospital just like they did on 5/30 and just like on 5/30 I wanted out, out, out — but this time I made it through, thanks to some Xanax. Got my stress test and the doc said my heart looks great. That leaves gastro-intestinal, lung, and/or anxiety as the culprits. I hope we can figure it out and get it stopped. But what a relief that it evidently wasn’t my heart!

I think having a prescription for Xanax will help. The most disruptive aspect of the chest pain has been the anxiety it produces. Xanax could mean the difference between being able to make it through the day or night and running away in fear.

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Sudo Get Me A Heart Attack

On 06.01.10, In Heart, By admin

Sitting on the back porch. I love this place. We both do. We’ve done a ton of demolition here. More than a ton, actually. We finally have things growing in our backyard, and this table on this porch is one of my favorite places to be.

I bought 15 plants on Saturday — 5 Black & Blue Salvia, 5 Blue Plumbagos, and 5 Flame Salvias. Yesterday, I got busy digging up the remaining compacted earth around the pool so I could plant our new flower garden. I dug the top 2 or 3 inches out of a trench maybe 4′x2′, stopping often to catch my breath the way I always do. And then it suddenly seemed important to take a sit-down water break.

I headed to this table and the bottle of ice water I had waiting for me, and I remember thinking it seemed strange that I had to sit down. I did sit down and started to take a drink but stopped short of my mouth because my entire chest suddenly felt like it was on fire. I decided to go lean back on the couch inside, but the pain intensified. The pain was suddenly more important the the ice water and I could never seem to make it all the way to drinking. I leaned back, I sat up — the pain just kept intensifying and was becoming frightening. I pulled down my strapless bathing suit top but it didn’t help. I reached back and unhooked the top so I wouldn’t have anything tight around my chest but it didn’t do any good. I went in the bedroom to lay down but the pain just got worse, and I realized my neck and jaw were hurting just as much, but in a different way. I called for David.

Other than saying, “Chest hurts,” I couldn’t seem to say what was wrong. I felt terrible weak and light headed and we both immediately decided to take me to the ER. It seemed to take everything I had to simply step back in to my short and I didn’t think I was going to be able to find a shirt. I was breathing very heavily but I wasn’t wheezing. I thought the weakness, light-headedness and general confusion were just anxiety, and I would have preferred not to go — but the pain was just scary as hell and I knew I was experiencing the symptoms of a heart attack.

The pain subsided quickly once we were on our way to the hospital. I felt a little nauseous but even that was over by the time we got there.

My EKG was slightly abnormal, and because of that, the overall symptoms and how they’d occurred, as well as my risk factors (smoking, family history, high cholesterol) they wanted to keep me so they could measure my cardiac enzymes and do a stress test and ecocardiogram.

At first, I agreed, but a couple of hours later I changed my mind. Between David, my mother, and the doctor on call I was convinced to stay. When I woke up this morning I learned my enzymes were normal and I decided to leave against medical advice and follow up with the Austin Heart Hospital later this week.

I should add that what awakened me this morning, in the hospital, was the load of bricks sitting on my chest. Not an unusual feeling, for me, and a different kind of pain than yesterdays, but I thought it was worth mentioning to the nurse.

“Huh, I wonder what’s causing that? Your cardiac enzymes were normal.”

Which is great news! No cardiac enzyme problem means no heart damage. I think.

I know I should have stayed. I should have asked for some Valium or something. There is a protocol to heart problems and I was one of too many patients in an understaffed hospital on a holiday weekend. This claustrophobia I get in situations like this is awful for the people around me.

I feel exhausted and the chest pain from yesterday keeps whispering through. I feel like I just had surgery or something. My attempts at sleep were interrupted every several minutes by my mother’s coughing and repeated visits from technicians and nurses. They gave me nitroglycerin, which gave me a horrible headache, which didn’t help much. The equipment they used to monitor my vital signs malfunctioned multiple times, so they kept coming in to reset it, and then unhooked me and replaced it a couple of times, going through the laborious process of hooking me back up all over again. After the comment from the nurse about normal cardiac enzyme levels, I just couldn’t wait to get out of there.

I think 1/2 of everything that happened was simple panic. I don’t know what caused the rest of it — and I’m not sure I want to know. For 18 hours, starting yesterday afternoon, my body and my decisions seemed to be outside of my control. Mom and David. The doctor.

So much for my holiday weekend.

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First (and last) Lenovo Posto

On 03.17.10, In Afflictions, News, By admin

I purchased a schnazzy Lenovo S10-3t computer from Amazon.com, day before yesterday. I got it today and set it up tonight. I think it’s going to work great for posting to blogs, and for writing. But I am crazy nervous about the expense. It cost $524, with the RAM upgrade (it max’s out at 2GB) and tax, and another $130 to upgrade the operating system from Windows 7 Starter, which I read was basically useless, to Windows 7 Professional (otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to join a network to access my files, etc.). That’s a damn expensive budget computer, when I could have purchased the refurbished Toshiba for $339. I charged it to my Mastercard, thus giving myself plenty of time to pay it off on my meager hourly wage. You’re welcome, Capital One.

Guilt. Guilt.

Afflictions to whine about tonight: my ears hurt, my throat hurts, my chest goop is a bit painful, and my stomach is a little upset. I’m throwing that out that because, after all, this blog has become the home of my hypochondria, and a post about nothing more than my new computer would make little sense if I didn’t throw a few afflictions in to the mix.

(By the way, I felt great when I wrote my “That’s All Folks” post. Fabulous enough to think the afflictions were over. There is hope for me yet.)

And that’s all for my first Lenovo Posto, folks.

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Hello Mold

On 01.10.10, In Asthma, By admin

Still off the Lamictal, Seroquel, and Neurontin. Comparing now to a couple of months ago, how do I feel?

I don’t feel as moody, as paranoid, or as anxious. I haven’t had any panic attacks. I’ve lost about 10 pounds and I do feel lighter and less bloated because of that. I’ve stopped eating sugar all day every day so my energy level (such as it is) is at least more even than it was. I’m still getting muscle cramps but they don’t feel as debilitating. I’m not sleeping as well, but I’m getting more sleep than I did before (I think). More important to me, however, is the fact that I’m not taking those 3 medications that I’ve had a sneaking suspicion I had no business taking to begin with. Most important of all is that I don’t feel “addicted” to Seroquel. (I should add that I really hate trying to fall and stay asleep without Seroquel. I’ve tossed and turned so much in the past two weeks that I’m sore from it, and I’m getting up multiple times in the middle of the night).

However… this was not a panacea. It simply helped to narrow down the range of possibilities as far as what’s making me feel bad. My biggest “I don’t feel good” complaints right now are:

  • Rapid heart beat upon any kind of exertion
  • Shaky
  • Dizzy
  • Wheeziness
  • Itchiness
  • Watery eyes

I’ve been able to see a clear correlation between using my inhalers and the rapid heart beat/shaky symptoms. This makes perfect sense, but it’s also depressing. I tried going without my Symbicort for more than a week, and it was damned difficult to get to sleep at night because I never could clear my lungs out well enough to get a good breath. Without either inhaler I’d probably be shaky, etc., just from lack of oxygen.

Of course, I smoke, and yet what’s becoming clear to me – what I always suspected but am only just now becoming certain about – is that allergies… severe, chronic allergies… are behind the worst of my symptoms. They change every day. Some days, smoking makes things much worse. Some days I can smoke like a chimney and it doesn’t seem to make any difference at all.

So, as you know, I’ve been focusing on our house where the allergies are concerned, and feeling pretty overwhelmed because of it. I finally talked to David about it a little bit, yesterday, and told him I believe we’re going to have to bite the bullet and find some way to gut the master bedroom/master bathroom and get rid of the mold I have always suspected is everywhere in the walls and ceilings in there. He didn’t disagree, which is a start. In fact, we decided to go ahead and pull the wallpaper out of the master bath and take a look behind some of the tiles, last night – and there was mold everywhere. On the studs behind the rotted drywall, for instance, a slick, black coating of slippery mold. On the surfaces underneath the tile we pulled off, colonies of black and green mold. The area around the window seems especially bad, but we haven’t made our way to the door frame yet, which is rotted at the bottom and has a moldy hole we can already see inside of. The ceiling in the bedroom is puffy and droopy from an old leak the previous owners didn’t fix correctly, so my imagination is running wild thinking about what it looks like on the other side of it. And then there’s the carpet, of course – our air conditioning unit froze up last summer, causing a leak that flooded the carpet in our bedroom and hallway. God only knowns what the pad and floor look like underneath the carpet.

So our mission for today is to get our stuff out of the bedroom and move in to David’s office (our next largest bedroom) for the time being. From there we’re going to tape off the air intake vent and the doorways and start knocking stuff out. With plenty of protective gear/face masks, etc., of course. Depending on how it goes we may or may not have to call in some professionals for assistance.

A little afraid of what we’re going to find in the attic when we get the ceiling down. There’s no access to that part of the attic, right now. Our home owner’s insurance doesn’t cover mold – I remember that quite clearly – so whatever we find and whatever we need to do is going to be up to us to cover the cost of.

Once we get the moldy stuff off of/out of there we can call in the professionals to clean the rest of the moldy, dusty, 40-year-old-blown-in-insulation out of the attic, and to clean the duct work and reseal the ducts.

Maybe my allergies will improve as things progress, giving me more energy to deal with the mess itself.

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Between A Rock And A Hoard Place

On 01.06.10, In Asthma, By admin

Finally started my period, somehow managing to make it through PMS without falling back on the comforts of my old medications. I am sleeping through the night on nothing but 100mg of Unisom (which, in theory at least, should also help take care of my allergies).

My allergies, and accompanying asthma, have become my primary focus. I have to admit that my allergic reaction to the environmental variables around me is more than just an annoyance; I am in a more or less constant state of illness. If I take nothing for it I am incapacitated, if I take something for it the symptoms improve but are counter-balanced by the negative side effects of the medication I am taking. I am stymied as to what to do about this.

First, let’s look at the allergies themselves: pet dander, mold, and dust. These are the three items my allergy testing came back with as clear allergic reactions.

We have 3 cats (they came with the husband) and one big, fuzzy dog. All four animals shed profusely, and the cats prefer to lounge on whatever surface my husband and I most enjoy lounging on – especially the bed. At this point in our lives, pet dander has seeped in to the crevices of everything in our home, from our clothing to our walls. We are deeply attached to our pets and they will be with us for the rest of their lives.

Austin has measurable mold in the air every day of the year. Periods where the mold is “high” often find me wondering if I’ve contracted pneumonia because it makes me so ill.

Dust is another big problem. In my own life I have tended to retain few possessions, but my husband came with a house-full. We have stacks of furniture, boxes, bags of stuff in every room of our house. Although we don’t use these things we seem unable to get rid of them. My husband worries that he has hoarding tendencies and it’s true that he does. We are surrounded by things that not only collect, but generate, dust.

When we were dating I used to return home from my husband’s apartment overflowing with the symptoms of allergic reaction. I worried about what it would be like to live with them full time and now, five years later, I know.

I feel so trapped by all of this. I love my husband and my pets, but I am so tired and so sick from all of this that I don’t have the energy to do much about anything. I feel that I am fighting a constant, losing battle, and most days it seems like the best I can do is to brush the cat hair off my pillow before I go to bed and shake the dander out of my coat before I go to work. My husband really doesn’t get it. He doesn’t seem to have any allergies to anything, and he thinks of dusting as being that thing you do to the edges of boxes that allows you to get a better grip when you move them around every few years. His favorite time of day is snuggling in bed with the cats and, although we’ve gone through periods when we’ve banished them from the bedroom, eventually they always find a way back in until, eventually, the live on our bed. We’re going through such a period right now.

I’m at a point in my life where I need every once of energy I can get and yet the drag, the inertia, of my living situation seem insurmountable.

I will probably feel better within a few days – more hopeful, anyway. Today, though, just like yesterday and the day before, I feel glued to the spot I am in. Sick, tired, and resigned.

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RACTHOUGHTSING

On 12.30.09, In Asthma, Bipolar Disorder, Dentistry, By admin

Quick update: it went great – 100 times better than I could possibly have hoped for. Not only did they not have to give me any shots to numb my mouth during the teeth cleaning, but they told me I no longer have gum disease. On top of that, they did not 2, but 6, fillings – at the gumline of each of my top upper teeth. It was fabulous. A bit sore, now, but the impact to my self-esteem is huge. I no longer feel embarrassed to smile.

Well, so much for thinking I might be able to get by with Trazedone and Claritin :-(

I’ve been waking up with a song stuck in my head and racing thoughts for the past few days, and this morning was the worst, yet. I’ve been growing more distracted at the same time — and perhaps a bit moodier.  And my heart is racing, and I’m shaky. And this is very, very uncomfortable. The very worst of it seems to dissipate as I wake up, but most of it will probably stick with me throughout the day.

I’m concerned about myself, this morning. Will these old, familiar (but absent, for the most part, on my Seroquel/Lamictal/Neurontin regimen) go away if I stop taking the Trazedone and Claritin? One small hope along with the concerns, though, is that it will stop once I start my period, which is likely to be late this month because of all the changes and stress over the past few weeks. Racing thoughts have always peaked right before my period.

So — no Claritin today, and I’ll try half a Trazedone instead of the full 100mg pill before bed, tonight.  I’ll try switching to Unisom (my old stand-by from my pre-psychophamacuetical days) over the next few days, or maybe I’ll try Melatonin, instead.  I’ll try taking something else for allergies — or even taking nothing for allergies. Allergies are a common topic of conversation in Austin, Texas, especially this time of year. While the optical migraines, itchy skin, runny nose, and watery eyes are miserable, they are nothing compared to how uncomfortable I feel when my asthma gets worse on top of it (as it always does). This time of year I have the triple-play of mold, cedar, and artificial heating, and I have yet to find a way to feel better for any long period of time. Claritin works minor miracles, but I can’t tolerate it for more than a few days at a time (if the racing thoughts don’t happen, extreme irritability does). Although this sounds extreme, it’s actually quite common in this part of the country.

And just to get all of my whining in, for the day, my internal thermostat has gone wonky. It’s 41 degrees outside and we’ve had our heater set on 73 for the past 24 hours, and I’m sitting here in my husband’s sweatshirt, flannel pajama bottoms, and socks; sitting here drinking hot coffee, and freezing. Wishing it was 104 outside again, as it seemed to be for most of the summer. I don’t have much tolerance for cold – in fact I started looking for beams of sunlight to stand in during my smoke breaks when the temperature finally dropped below 90 last September – but this has been one of the coldest Decembers on record in Austin.

I’m heading off for my second round of dental work this morning. I’m taking what would normally be 3 separate appointments (one for root scaling and planing in both sides of my mouth, and one for 2 fillings I’m having done) and combining them in to one. While I do not expect it to be a pleasant experience and while I know my mouth will be sore and my teeth will be extra sensitive for the next few days, I do look forward to having this dental work behind me.

I need to leave here in about 45 minutes; in the meantime, I’m going to go crank the heat up to 77, wrap up in a fuzzy comforter, and plop down on our sofa under the heating vent.

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Check Up

On 12.28.09, In Asthma, Diet, Insomnia, Medication, By admin

I ran through the contents of this blog the other day. I started it back in October (not so long ago, really) with a few posts from the previous year. I thought I wanted it to be a blog about mental illness… but that’s not how it worked out, it seems. For now, at least, this blog is really more about simply trying to feel better in every possible way. And for now, at least, that means trying to sort out what is causing what in my body (if baseline should be a body that functions well and feels fine).

I’ve stopped taking Lamictal, Seroquel, Neurontin, and Symbicort. I’ve cut my Protonix dose in half. I’ve added Trazedone and 12-Hour Claritin D. If you saw my post about side-effects, then you know the list of problems I’ve been dealing with on a daily basis is quite long, and if you’ve been reading lately at all you know that I also had some relatively major oral surgery a couple of weeks ago.

Here’s an update on how things are going, so far.

Sleep {Seroquel}

I have a history of running in to intolerable withdrawal symptoms when I try to wean myself off of Seroquel. But off of it I am, and I seem to have managed to get through it just fine, this time.

Seroquel is the most effective sleeping pill (not it’s intended purpose, but a side effect, actually) I’ve ever taken, and believe me when I say I’ve tried them all. On the other hand, it never made sense to me to take a sleeping pill every night for the rest of my life. Sleeping pills are usually short-term solutions. Instead, it’s been a daily solution of mine for close to ten years. Add to that the risks associated with this drug — weight gain, high cholesterol, diabetes — and you have some very good reasons to stop taking it. The final kicker for me, though, was that I began to experience what my doctor and myself thought might be extrapyramidial symptoms (i.e., I couldn’t swallow at night).

To my enormous surprise, I was able to successfully make the switch from Seroquel to Trazedone in one fell swoop. Two things made the difference, I think: 1) my allergies bother me a lot at this time of year, so I started taking 12-Hour Claritin D at about the same time that I stopped taking Seroquel (which made the all-over itching tolerable); and 2) my oral surgery gave me something else to think about.

I think I’m sleeping about as well on Trazedone as I did on Seroquel, though maybe not quite as deeply. I gradually stopped having any trouble swallowing, though it’s impossible to say if Seroquel was the specific cause of that problem.

Although I’ve taken Seroquel for about 10 years, I took other things for years before that, starting back in 1996. My hope is that some time in the next year I can learn to sleep without a sleeping pill, again. It’s going to take quite some time to get there, I fear.

Mood {Lamictal, Neurontin}

Here’s something worth noting: my mood does not appear to have been affected by these changes in any negative way at all. In fact, the paranoia has disappeared, and my mood overall just seems much more even that it had been. Trazedone is also an antidepressant, so I guess that could be helping things, but I don’t know.

You’d think that someone who’s bipolar would at least have some kind of major mood swing when confronted with all of these sudden chemical changes and physical stressors, but it simply hasn’t happened.

Lungs/Asthma {Symbicort}

All of the congestion in my lungs – and I do mean all of it – stopped as soon as I stopped taking Symbicort. That’s one drug I didn’t stop all at once, I tapered off of it, and the congestion tapered away with it. The constantly having to clear my throat, the coughing something up every few minutes of the day, are gone. In addition, I simply don’t feel nearly as out of breath, and my heart doesn’t threaten to explode when I climb the stairs at work.

On the other hand, I do have a dry, allergy-like cough.

Now, here’s something weird: I tend to keep my albuterol inhaler with me at all times, and I typically use it either before or after every smoke break at work. My bronchial tubes protest when I smoke, this time of year, and the albuterol calms them down. Last week I got to work only to realize that I’d forgotten to bring my inhaler with me. It was a panicky feeling, let me tell you – I was convinced that as soon as I smoked I was going to start wheezing in a particularly uncomfortable and embarrassing way… but it never happened. I smoked less that day, and I never had an asthma attack, and I was just fine. I was just fine until I got home, that is. And then the bronchial spasms started back up.

We have 3 cats and a dog and we’re all slobs. Pet hair floats freely through the atmosphere, along with dust and dander, and I happen to be allergic to all three of these things. Yes, I’m allergic and I know it and I don’t do anything about it.

Long story short: my allergies and my housekeeping are both bad. And I need to stop using drugs as a crutch to avoid those realities.

Not that I’ll stop using my albuterol. Asthma is serious business. But still…. I’ve obviously been using my inhaler even when I don’t really need to. And if we were to clean this house up, and wash and groom our pets, and keep at it, I could probably use it even less. Meaning that I would feel better and lower the risk of side effects adding to my misery.

Indigestion (aka GERD) {Protonix}

A quick update about this. Unfortunately, this is not a symptom that has improved with a decrease in my daily dosage of Protonix.

My prescription for this medication calls for me to take twice the highest recommended dosage every day. I tried to cut it back to, simply, the highest recommended dosage. I’m back to getting indigestion every night. I haven’t woken up choking on it, yet (FYI: this is why I take it – I’ve had several frightening nights when I’ve woken up after having inhaled a bunch of acid from my stomach).

Two thoughts about this: 1) The original instructions I had for this medication called for me to take it first thing in the morning 30 minutes before I consume anything else, including coffee. I’ve never taken it that way, so that’s something to try. 2) Maybe I need to go back to my doctor or see another doctor about this problem.

A related problem has been nausea. It may be a withdrawal symptom, but I have been experiencing sudden and intense waves of nausea. These have been easily remedied by eating something as soon as the nausea hits. I have mild nausea when I don’t eat enough, anyway, but this has been something else. Thank goodness there’s a fast and easy way to control it.

Diet

My intense craving for sweets seems to have dissipated. In fact, a bigger problem I’m facing is a simple lack of appetite. I do still get hungry, occasionally, but only after going for close to 24 hours without eating. I’m having to force myself to eat during the day because the motivation (hunger) to eat simply isn’t popping up in a normal way. I have no desire to cook anything specific because I don’t feel hungry for anything specific. When I do eat, I don’t eat much.

How much of this anorexia is being caused by my change in medications, and how much is being caused by recovery from oral surgery (eating is also much more difficult than it was a few weeks ago) is impossible to tell.

My diet is definitely causing me some problems. I’m running out of energy, and when I’m low on energy I’m even less likely to eat.

I think of this as an opportunity to change my diet for the better. If I don’t care what I eat then it doesn’t matter if I choose, say, a healthy meal rather than junk food. This is a work in progress for me.

(By the way, I think it’s worth noting, here, that after my oral surgery the morning of the 16th, I didn’t eat again until the night of the 19th and that was just some mashed potatoes and green beans).

I’ve only lost 5 pounds, which means I’m not getting anything out of this problem with my appetite. Probably because I’m continuing to make poor choices about what I eat – a milkshake in lieu of lunch, a Snak-Pak pudding in lieu of breakfast, a sausage-croissant sandwich from Jack In The Box in lieu of dinner.

Sex Drive

Well hello there! Haven’t seen you around these parts in awhile. Where did you disappear to, anyway? Gosh but I’d love to spend some time with you. I hope you’ll stick around while I recover from the raging yeast infection the antibiotics I took for my oral surgery gave me. You. Are. Looking. Good.

While my husband is clearly happy to hear me say I have a sex drive again, he seems equally happy to chuckle about my inability to do anything about its return. Almost as if he is basking in the irony of the situation. I mean this is a good way. Anticipation in any marriage is a welcome change of pace.

That’s it for today, just wanted to check in. I’m curious as to where this will all lead. But hopeful, too. Coming soon: research the side-effects of 12-Hour Claritin D and Trazedone, and update my side-effects table.

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Everything You Never Wanted To Know About My Mouth

On 12.27.09, In Dentistry, By admin

We went to my parent’s house for dinner, last night. Mom made roast and mashed potatoes and green beans and home made biscuits and gravy. It was yummy (though my mouth isn’t ready for solid meat, yet), and fun. David bought the game “Taboo” specifically for the evening, and we talked Dad in to playing, even though Dad hates-hates-hates to play games. We laughed hysterically, which was wonderful.

I have to admit, though, that after a couple of hysterical laughing fits I began to realize that my mouth was feeling rather punished. The flesh around my extracted molars was stretched beyond some limit I guess I shouldn’t have crossed and, in fact, it was the most severe pain I’ve experienced throughout my recovery process. Not a dangerous pain, just a painful pain. It passed, for the most part, once I stopped laughing.

On the other hand, today was a bad mouth day, and it brought back memories.

Back when I was 17, I had a mouth full of healthy teeth. Too many teeth, in fact, and they were crooked. I couldn’t afford braces but I was determined to find some way to straighten them up. I consulted with our local dentist who extracted five teeth near the front of my mouth and gave me a retainer. I wore the retainer exactly once.

When I was 18 years old I remember finding a sore spot in the back of my mouth, in between two of my bottom molars, It felt as if I had something wedged in between my teeth – I could feel it with my tongue – and it was sore, but I couldn’t see it or fish it out. Within one week I had a rare case of trench mouth, the gums around every one of my teeth necrotizing and dissolving in lipid pools of puss. The pain was extreme, matched only by the embarrassment I felt over the situation (and the financial inability to do a thing about it). I waited weeks to see a periodontist and by that time the damage was done. My gums dad receded well above the level of my original gum line, never to return, exposing the nerves of most of my teeth to the ravages of hot and cold, salt and sweet. I lost bone to the infection. I was a walking raw nerve.

I didn’t see a dentist again for around five years, and then only because my boyfriend bartered with his best friend who happened to be a dentist. Kenny took xrays and explained that while I no longer had trench mouth, I did have Periodontitis which would likely require surgery and long-term antibiotics to resolve. He explained that there were indications that I had a lingering infection in the bone around my teeth, as well. He added, at the end, that my wisdom teeth would likely also need to be removed at some point. I promptly stored this information in my memory banks and ignored it. The xrays, the examination, had been painful because by then everything about my mouth was always painful.

Some seven years later I saw a dentist here in Austin, determined to have cosmetic work done to rehabilitate my smile. The dentist took xrays and agreed that I would need to have gum surgery, but said it appeared that the Periodontitis had retreated in to plain old gingivitis and that, while there were signs of bone loss around some of my teeth (in addition to the areas where the teeth were pulled when I was 17), there was no sign of infection. He also told me the first cosmetic step would be to have my wisdom teeth removed, followed by gum surgery and possible gum grafts. We tried cleaning my teeth but had to back up and numb my whole mouth to do it. When I walked out of that office with clean teeth I felt like a million bucks and I promptly started trying to find an oral surgeon to remove my wisdom teeth. I couldn’t find anybody who was willing to do the extractions using anesthesia, so I gave up.

A few years later I saw another dentist who did something in between gum surgery and a thorough teeth cleaning: root scaling and planing. Oh, I know it sounds awful, but the shots to numb my mouth (which was no big deal, really) were the worst of it. All of the lingering gum pain vanished within days.

A few years later I saw yet another dentist, and this time was informed that I suddenly had a mouth full of cavities. The dentist sat me down to do a few of the fillings and disaster ensued. He was a young army doctor, fresh out of the military, assisted only by a newly graduated dental assist, and it was her first day on the job. Twenty shots of lidocaine in to the procedure he ordered me to sit on my hands because I was annoying him with all of my pushing at his wrist when things hurt — and I did it. He finally finished, informing me that patients were backed up in the waiting room and things had taken twice as long as I’d been scheduled for. He then calmly informed me that he’d only been able to work on two teeth, and that they would both require root canals, and one might need to be extracted.

I was in such pain following this procedure that I didn’t go back to a dentist for months. I spent the summer sipping lukewarm soup and chewing with my front teeth. I couldn’t find an endodontist on my insurance plan who provided any kind of sedation, so I finally went out of plan and paid more than $500 for my own nurse-anesthesist. The drugs were incredibly fabulous, so much so that I insisted that I did not need the prescription for Vicodin they suggested I fill immediately. Within 24 hours I was in the most intense pain of my life, and we were rushing back from my in-laws house out in the boonies to get back home to the prescription and a 24 hour pharmacy. We paged the endodontist, who never returned my calls. I never returned for the crowns on the root canals. I already knew that one tooth – a bottom molar on my right side – was too far gone to crown, in fact, and would have to be removed: it had cracked, vertically, down the center.

Well, that was two and a half years ago, and the upper root canal I never got crowned is the one that broke a few weeks ago, leading me to where I am today.

I finally did it. I finally got the dang wisdom teeth removed, and I’m going back for another root scaling and planing and a couple of fillings (I’m told I need six, this time) next Wednesday and ding-dong-dangit I ain’t waiting around for my teeth to fall apart any longer.

I am quite honestly 100% fixated on my mouth, at the moment. Today, it ached the way it ached when I still had Periodontitis, and one extraction area (my 2nd molar, not a wisdom tooth) isn’t healing right. It’s very uncomfortable. The gums around my entire mouth ache. But it’s nothing terrible at this point – I’m not bleeding, or experiencing swelling. I think it’s just inflammation. I’m so relieved to have an oral surgeon I trust and a follow-up appointment on Monday, and the regular dentist visit/root scaling thing On Wednesday.

It’s different than the pain I felt for so many years. Not dangerous. Not something that’s going to continue indefinitely and lead down some dark alley of infection. I’m in good hands and I’m headed in the right direction.

Now, if I can just get it off my mind for five minutes.

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Quick Update

On 12.23.09, In Dentistry, By admin

As usual, I’ve stayed away from work for days longer than I’d planned to. I went in yesterday morning as usual, but became so completely exhausted driving that I had trouble even paying attention to traffic. By the time I got to my desk it was clear to me that I wasn’t going to be able to work – it was simply a matter of trying to rest for long enough to drive back home.

I was sure it was because I (a) had eaten hardly anything in a week, and (b) am on heavy duty antibiotics, but I was concerned that I might also have been coming down with an infection, so I stopped by my dentist’s office on the way home. No infections, everything looked good, so I headed back to our house and made myself eat some Spagetti-O’s with Meatballs. They went down easy, and though I was still too exhausted to attempt much else I did feel slightly less concerned about my state.

Saw my dentist again today about a white area above one of the molar extractions. I thought it was bone – it looked just like bone – but it’s actually some kind of tissue. The doctor seemed a bit perplexed but said he didn’t see anything that concerns him, and added that he thought the area had actually grown smaller since the day before. I took all of today off work, as well. I felt like a bit of a fraud, but the truth is that talking makes that area hurt quite a lot – and, of course, my job as a call center agent is to do nothing but talk all day.

I see the general surgeon about my breasts tomorrow morning. On the 30th I go back to the dentist for root scaling & planing plus a couple of fillings.

I haven’t had any Neurontin, Lamictal, or Seroquel in over a week, now, and I’m doing amazingly well. It certainly helps to have something else to fixate on.

Crossing some of the big stuff off my list, here.

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Suckiness

On 12.18.09, In Dentistry, By admin

Ok, so – really? Getting these teeth pulled out has turned out to be every bit as un-fun as I had feared that it would. If I can just manage to avoid dry-socket (the next two to three days will tell) I think I’ll survive, but let me tell you why getting teeth pulled out of their sockets sucks.

First, let’s stop differentiating between wisdom teeth and other teeth. Because, to tell you the truth, the wisdom teeth they pulled out seem to be the least of my problems. It’s the hole left behind by the 2nd molar I broke two weeks ago that causing me the biggest problem, or, at least, the biggest fears.

I am now cold turkey off Lamictal, Seroquel, and Gabapentin, and it doesn’t seem to matter at all, so distracted am I by the ruin that is my jaw. And I haven’t eaten solid food in 48 hours, now, which is weird partly because I don’t care. I have discovered that Trazedone causes nausea, and that cherry Slurpee eaten with a spoon can help. I have discovered that you really can get tired of chocolate ice cream. I have rediscovered the overpowering aroma of canned soup on an empty stomach; an odor so severe that it has actually prevented me from eating said soup. I have discovered that we suck on things all the time (namely, our teeth and tongue) without even realizing it. I have discovered that it is very difficult to lick your lips if the back of your jaw is swollen. I have discovered that pain medication holds no lure when you fear nausea. I have discovered that you can smoke a cigarette without actually sucking on the filter, and that it makes you cough a lot when you do.

More than anything else, though, I’ve rediscovered the importance of healing time. That, and the fact that I can’t write worth beans when I’m completely fixated on my tooth-holes and haven’t eaten anything more nutritious than a Snak-Pack pudding in two days.

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