I am a bit reluctant to make another thread in the pit, but I cannot see a thread about dental problems going anywhere else. 
This is also a bit long, apologies.
There is not a lot of excessive swearing here, mostly because I cannot curb the urge to just start slamming keys left and right in a frustrated effort to adequately express the amount of unbelievable pain in my face. The appropriate words do not exist. Maybe, someday, the word “SDFOLIUSJIOFLHOUERHSEFSDF!!!” will be added to the dictionary, but as of yet, it has not been. Plus, me screaming ‘FUCK!’ about 700 times in rapid succession, while possibly entertaining and/or annoying, would not really serve much purpose here and really lose most of its entertainment value in the speech-to-text conversion, anyway.
I have had a broken tooth for a while now. It is a long story, but basically a dentist botched a filling a really long time ago (while I was still a teenager), and I have had the tooth fixed twice again since then, and it needed to be fixed AGAIN. I was without any dental coverage for a really long time, and had other, far more serious health problems going on. So, it went untreated, because it was not causing me pain.
Big mistake, and the catalyst leading to my inevitable downfall. I can pit myself for this piece of stupidity and/or ignorance.
It acted up from time to time, and I ignored the little bastard, mostly because again, I have other medical issues and such to be dealing with, and sometimes you take things (like your teeth) for granted. I am also irrationally paranoid of dentists and dentistry in general, because of a really bad dentist that I had in the past. I was extremely reluctant to go anywhere to get anything done without actual ‘put you out’ anesthesia, and no one does that anymore. So, I let it go.
Last Friday evening, around 7 P.M., all Hell broke loose with the tooth in question. There was a frat-style kegger party of pain in my mouth, and EVERYONE was invited. I don’t know what crazy hazing rituals were going on at this party, but it was unreal. Two days prior I had been out of work sick with some virus going around, and so I had to drag my weeping ass into work that night, no excuses.
My whole face hurt. I felt like I had been kicked in the jaw by a freshly-shod horse. The affected tooth bottom row, right hand side, middle) screamed angrily at me if I so much as tried to close my mouth. Breathing in air hurt. The entire jaw, and the two teeth in back and in front of the affected tooth were sore as hell. Forget eating, drinking, or smiling. I was holding my face in anguish.
It was Friday night, and I did not have a dentist, at all. Not even a regular one that I saw for cleanings. Apparently this is a grievous sin, according to everyone I talked to, and I should be staked up on a cross for not having a regular dentist. I know it’s important, but in the relative scale of important things in my life, it was not at the top, I’m sorry. So, I had to wait until Monday to find one.
Friday night I managed to make it through work, crying and holding ice packs to my face, taking ibuprofen like mad. I have been on higher than regular doses of ibuprofen for a while (on prescription orders, not just at whim), due to endometriosis and arthritis, but when I tell doctors (who have not seen me before) what dosage I am taking, they generally bitch and moan at me, until I get a word in edgewise to explain that I’ve been taking slightly higher doses for a while due to those reasons.
I know that taking more medication than prescribed or directed is bad. I know some things, like acetaminophen, can kill you if you OD just barely. But I’ve been taking it for a while, I have had no problems with kidney and liver functions, and I am not taking handfuls at a time. So, yes, I took this second dose of ibuprofen after five hours instead of six, please just fucking crucify me now. I was in pain. Normally, I take nothing more than acetaminophen or ibuprofen for anything. It is not like I am stringing myself out on narcotics all day long.
I make it through Friday, and go home and try to cry myself to sleep. Not very successful. The screaming pain comes back a few hours later. I don’t really know what to do, so I just pace around my house and want to slam my head into the walls repeatedly. Make it to work on Saturday, more crying and ibuprofen and ice packs.
Sunday morning I can simply no longer stand it, and go to the ER, after I get permission to leave work 10 minutes early. Checked in, etc etc, they ask me about my pain, I rate it an 8. They send me to the ‘dental’ room (apparently they have a particular room for dental issues), and I sit there for about an hour before anyone comes in. Doctor takes a look at my mouth, says for me to call a dentist on Monday. Yes, I will be doing this. Certainly.
In the meantime, they peform a nerve block. I could have kissed the ER doctor if he would have let me. They make a big fuss about warning me about the needle to inject the anesthetic into my jaw, but really, I don’t care. Jab at me for a half an hour with needles if you have to, I’m not squeamish. If it will make me feel better, jab away. Have a conga line of nurses with needles come and dance by me, each jabbing me as they go. As long as it will take this pain away, please, do your dance. I will even applaud at the end.
I got sent home with the block and a prescription for enough pain medication to last me 1-2 days (depending on if I took 1 or 2 at a time). Next morning, Monday, I call the local dentist. They opened up a practice within walking distance from my house. I have transportation issues as I do not drive, so this would be perfect. They tell me they have no emergency appointments available that day, but they can see me Tuesday at 2pm. Beautiful, I say. I’ll take whatever I can get.
I go to the appointment on Tuesday, get X-rayed, and sat in the dentist’s chair. The doctor and nurse are nice enough, and explain the problem with my tooth. It is open completely to the root, and abcessed. They say I need a root canal and crown. I figured this, which is another reason why things went so long without treatment. I cannot afford a root canal and a crown, my insurance barely touches the cost. But, at this point, I do not have much choice.
Upside of this visit is that they were very thorough in explaining things wrong with my teeth, and immediately upon examining my mouth, told me I had Benign Migratory Glossitis (Geographic Tongue). I have been having problems with painful tongue symptoms for the last year, and every doctor I ever went to kept diagnosing it as thrush and insisting it was a fungal infection. I kind of had to figure out on my own that it wasn’t, and as long as I avoided spicy and acidic foods, it was pretty much okay. Funny, a half-dozen doctors can’t figure out what the hell it is, but all I had to do was say ‘Aah’ for the dentist to know what it was.
They schedule me for an appointment FOURTEEN DAYS LATER for the beginning of my treatment. Meanwhile they give me a script for Amoxicillin and tell me that this will ‘hold me over’ until then. Apparently the dentist is going on vacation and cannot do it earlier.
My face is throbbing, I can hardly sleep. I can’t eat. I’m sitting at work every night with icepacks on my face, in tears. I am already taking the maximum therapeutic dose of ibuprofen and I cannot take more. They tell me that they won’t give me anything for pain, but that if I really think I need it, I can call the office or come in. I am tired and frustrated and hurting and sick of being in pain so I say okay, take my appointment, and go home.
Wednesday and Thursday are a blur. I hardly remember them at all. I took my antibiotics like a good little girl. The swelling went down but the pain remained. I was in so much pain that I basically passed out at one point, probably half from exhaustion. I only vaguely remember talking to a friend on AIM to try and distract myself, and the next thing I recall is that I am waking up in my bed, trying not to faceplant on my floor while getting up. Checking my computer, I have a garbled message to aforementioned friend, saying something like, ‘I need to lay down before I pass out’, only full of typos and gibberish.
Still faithfully taking my ibuprofen and antibiotics, believing the doctors when they say I’ll be perfectly fine.
Friday, the pain is back full-force, and the idea of spending another entire weekend like this is really not in my top ten list of things to do. It’s not even in the top 100. It’s somewhere around #9,784, in between having shards of broken glass jammed underneath my fingernails and being sodomized with a freshly-picked pineapple.
I call my dentist’s office, desperately in pain.
“No one here will prescribe anything for you, and the doctor that saw you is on vacation.”
So, you folks all knew he’d be on vacation, which is why you scheduled me in two weeks for the root canal instead of now, refuse to give me anything for pain because you insist that if I ‘really need it’ I can just call you, and now you give me this?
I think I need to go pick a pineapple.
So, the woman continues, “Can you come in at 2?”
Yes, I’ll come in. I’ll do pretty much anything. I’ll chew on a flaming hedgehog if you tell me to. Just fix this god damned pain. Please.
I hang up the phone and they call me back five minutes later, asking me to come in now instead. So, I get myself up and out and walk to the office. I don’t have to wait long, they take me in pretty quickly. I see a different dentist this time.
In the chair again. Doctor looks at my X-rays, I give her the spiel. Still painful, still tender. Swelling down. Pain same. Trouble eating, sleeping, etc. She offers some options, including starting a root canal right then, but not finishing it until later (which I am not fond of), and putting in a temporary filling, just so it’s not completely open. This sounds like the best option to me.
Now that that’s decided, they sit me back in the chair and proceed to jam a filling into the broken tooth opening. No novocaine. No topical stuff. Nothing. Nada. It was horribly painful, but bearable, until she decided to make sure that I could still floss between the tooth. There was too much excess dental cement, so she simply forced the floss through the space to make enough room.
At this point I almost screamed, whimpered, and started to cry. I have never felt pain like that in my entire life, and I have endometriosis and spinal arthritis. I have had multiple surgeries, and even when the pain meds had worn off and I was hurting from multiple incisions, it didn’t hurt this badly.
They sat me up and let me go home, with nothing but another antibiotic.
I went to leave, and they wanted a $40 co-pay. I had not expected actually having anything done, and had been sort of half-out of it leaving the house, so I had not brought my wallet with me. I told them I would pay for it when I came back to have the root canal done. I’m going to request an itemized bill. I want to see where they come up with a $40 co-pay.
The other thing I am insanely fucking angry about is the fact that they could have filled it on Monday with the temporary filling. This would have been completely covered by my insurance, as a maintenance visit, and I would not have had to pay a dime. Since it was done on the second visit, I have to pay for it.
With the amount of money I am paying and have yet to pay to try and get this tooth fixed, I could have gone on a full two-week vacation.
And I am still in pain, right now.
I know there are things I could have done. I could have been more assertive. I could have told them to stop what they were doing, and not let them cause me that much pain with the temporary filling. But I panicked. I just sat in the chair and closed my eyes and let them finish their job. I am terrified of dentists, and I do not want to be known as a problem patient. So I generally just shut up and let them do what they figure is best.
I understand that people trying to obtain narcotic pain medication when they don’t need it, in order to get high or sell it is an issue. In fact, in the area where I live… it’s not exactly the nicest part of town. There is a big notice on the new health care / dentist office that says ‘NO NARCOTIC MEDICATIONS ARE KEPT ON THE PREMISES’. Working in the lab, we do a lot of narcotic screens. I know that it’s a big problem.
However, when you have someone clearly suffering with a valid medical problem, denying them anything to ease their pain is pure fucking cruelty.
People in the ER for unspecified abdominal pain get MORPHINE. I have a gaping hole exposing nerve/root in my face, and the only thing these nimrods seem to know how to say is ‘take ibuprofen!’
I don’t drink alcohol. I don’t smoke. I don’t take any regular prescriptions. Once a month, I get a very small quantity of pain medication for my endometriosis (and it took me nine years of treatments and surgeries before they would give me even that). I don’t always actually use what I am prescribed. I have to call for the refills every month. Sometimes I only ask for it once every three months, and once I went six months without needing it. If I really wanted to abuse it, I would fill it every month and just hoard them. Maybe now I will, just in case something like this ever happens again.
I’m sick of the stigma attached to people who take or need medication. If I am in pain from a legitimate medical issue and OTC stuff isn’t working, why is it some grievous sin to not want to be in pain? It’s bad enough that even OTC stuff is getting cracked down on. I’m sick of feeling like some kind of criminal because I have extra bad allergies one week and want to buy an extra box of sudafed.
Fuck the dentist who ruined the filling job to begin with, fuck the dentist that screwed up my teeth so badly that I am scared of dentists to this day, fuck the dentist that plowed around in my already-sore mouth without novocaine, and fuck me for being stupid enough to let it get this bad in the first place.
And fuck the fakers and abusers who make it hard for people like me to get pain relief when they really need it. I shouldn’t have to pay for other people’s dishonesty.
I am normally in very good humor, even if it is black humor, and this extends to when I am sick. I firmly believe in laughter as medicine. However, the son of God himself could have stepped out of the shadows into my path as I walked home from the dentist yesterday, after getting that filling without novocaine, and I probably would have told him to either fix my face or go play hide-and-go-fuck-yourself.
Apologies if this is too mild for the pit, but the entire time I was writing all this, the only thing that I could hear in my own head was my own voice screaming “FUCK MY FACE, FUCK MY FACE, FUCK MY STUPID FACE,” repeatedly. With that sentiment in mind, I put it here.
It looks like I might have to spend the weekend like this, no matter what. Maybe I should go whip out that list and start from the bottom up. I’m still going to need to find a pineapple.