Sunday, August 30, 2009

postheadericon From a chicken bone to a root canal

I'll just start out by saying that I had all four of my wisdom teeth pulled at the same time. That procedure, and it's recovery, was no where close to the pain I have felt from having an emergency root canal done 5 days ago.

I was on my way to Sacramento the night before an early morning training session and stopped to have a chicken burrito for a quick dinner. The chopped up chicken still had a small bone, which I did not discover until I bit down on it. This is the moment where time froze and I experienced the most excruciating pain shoot through my mouth, along my jaw line, and up into my sinuses. I couldn't move for several minutes and my eyes welled up with tears. I'm not sure how I managed to not let any tear drops fall, but hey...I was in public.

This is the beginning of what became some of the most painful hours of my life, while trying to negotiate and survive what can only be described as HMO hell. I was 2 hours away from home where no 24hr emergency dental office was open or available, and my assigned dentist could not take an emergency appointment until mid-September. Seriously. Etienne is with me at this point and canceled his early morning flight to help me. I was in too much pain to do anything, let alone talk on the phone to a bunch of idiots who treated me as if I was over reacting to my first cavity. (Do I sound bitter?)

The first dental office was an incorrect address and was no longer there. The second dental office we found was available to take me that morning, and accepted my dental insurance...or so we thought. After arriving and filling out all the paperwork, we learned that there was a mistake and that they did not actually take my insurance. I will tell you though, based on what happened next, I would recommend this dentist to anyone. In this situation, the typical response from any given dental office would be to contact my insurance company for assistance (aka, you are no longer our problem and please leave). This office spent the next 20 minutes trying to help us. They could see that I was hurting and their professional and courteous response floored me. I will be changing my dental insurance just to be able to go back there.

We spent the next several hours looking for anyone to take me. We even made the emergency search a burden to my insurance company and had their assistance in calling around. They gave up after 2 individuals and sent us the remaining names on the list. Etienne continued the search while I continued to barely hold myself together...and after a little more time, he finally found a denist. There's only one problem. She was 2 hours from where we were. I'm now averaging about 15 hours with an exposed nerve. I had been in tears I can't tell you how many times, and my entire body was shaking uncontrollably from the pain. Orajel and Motrin just wasn't cutting it.

We finally reached the dentist where they were already prepped for me. They took some xrays (painful!), and 5 minutes later we were being sent to a specialist for an emergency root canal. The specialist was 5 towns away, and Etienne had us there in 20 minutes. We were over 16 hours with an exposed nerve at this point. After getting through the paperwork, and getting a few shots to numb me, the pain finally started to go away...but not completely. I counted 8 shots in total to get me to the point where they could remove the nerve. I'm not sure if I missed any on the shot count...at one point I closed my eyes to focus on breathing. My heart felt like it was going to pound right out of my chest from all of the stress. I was also a wee bit scared. I had no idea what to expect, there was no time to research it, and I was in too much pain to ask. The procedure took about an hour and I was sent home with Vicodin and high doses of Motrin. I still need to go back in for a crown which is normally about one week after having a root canal, however I was asked to allow 2 weeks to heal before scheduling the procedure. The specialist said that the severity was not completely reflected in the x-rays and that I would need more time.

Now, for some silly reason I expected the post surgery to be similiar to what I experienced when I had my wisdom teeth pulled. Boy was I wrong. The Motrin and the Vicodin did not have any impact on the pain for the next 3 days...with the second post surgery day being the most difficult. It's now 5 days later and I am still in pain. When medicated, it's a throbbing, obvious ache. When I'm not medicated, it's a sharp pain that I can feel through my jaw bone and up into my sinus cavity. I'm living off of hummus, peanut butter, breakfast drinks, and oatmeal. The swelling in my face has gone down, but is still visible, and it will be about 3 weeks until I'm back to normal.

What did I learn from all of this? Do not have a dental HMO plan. PPO is the only way to go...especially if you do any traveling. That is, unless having an exposed nerve in your mouth for about 18 hours and being sent to 4 dental offices in one days sounds like fun to you.

1 comments:

Dawn said...

awe...poor wissey

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Ang
I'm a fan of things that are tangibly funny. Meaning, is it real...could it, or did it really happen. It's the reality of life and the connection to a moment that can bring on a type of unforgettable laughter.
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