Tooth Hurty

Yesterday I'd been suffering from what I initially put down to being a migraine as the pain seemed to be on one side of my head¹ but eventually I realised was toothache. Some probing and it was pretty clear it was the tooth I'd had capped off, rather than extracted as was the original plan, some months before.

The dentist did say to me that if it caused me any grief he'd had to take it out but as it wasn't at the time he'd leave it be. Now it was clear to me that I had an abscess under the tooth as it hurt to press on it and around the base of the tooth from outside.

I ended up taking 30mg of codeine at bed time so I could get to sleep and it woke me up at 4am so I ended up getting up for another dose of codeine before sitting on the sofa for 45 minutes while it kicked it surfing the Web so I didn't wake Beth².

I was on the phone to the dentist on the stroke on 9am and got a 3:45pm appointment. From previous experience I was expecting to be fobbed off with antibiotics today as I know dentists don't like working on inflamed teeth, not least because it's difficult to numb them properly.

But my man went for it.

And boy, was it a struggle. This tooth was not in line³ but it still turned out to be firmly wedged between the teeth to left and right of it. He really struggled and at one point he had to take the drill to it to free things up.

By the time he pulled it out I'd been in really quite a lot of pain at various points and was distinctly punch drunk. Again (this is the second tooth I've had to have out in the last six months).

So I was sent home with a prescription for antibiotics and have spent the last few hours in bed dosed on those and more codeine. I do feel somewhat better now, although I'm going to have another slug of codeine at bed time⁴.

1. This is the classic migraine pattern, although unusually for me it was on the left rather than the right.
2. Turns out she slept through all of this: the getting up, taking drugs, and coming back so in that at least I succeeded.
3. My teeth are all over the place - should have had them straightened as a kid but my parents decided not to have it done for various reasons.
4. I won't be able to shit for a week!