Two days ago a tooth started hurting, since it was friday I figured I’ll wait after the weekend and call a dentist maybe on monday. Now its sunday night and my gums are all swelled up everywhere and it really hurts.
Obviously I’ll try to check in at a dentist first thing in the morning, but in the meanwhile, what should I do to ease the pain (and prevent losing my teeth). I’m preparing some herbal tea but I am under the impression that it won’t help very much…
also, what do I have, is that gingivitis? scurvy?
I’ve an idea of what you have. Probably a nasty dental infection. If one can tolerate meds like aspirin and tylenol without problems, one could alternate doses of Ibuprofen with tylenol as needed for pain.
One should not take ibuprofen more than every six hours (maximum dose 600 mg in a person who’s taken this amount before, less for someone naive to ibuprofen), even if they tolerate it ok. But if, an hour or so after taking ibuprofen (contraindicated with a history of allergy, bleeding ulcers, or severe NSAID intolerance), one still have significant pain, a dose of tylenol (assuming no alcohol, no liver disease, or allergy to it) could be beneficial, and not harm. Even if one is perfectly healthy and a normal sized adult, one should not take more than a gram of tylenol every 6 hours.
All this is a mere overnight stopgap until the matter is attended to by a professional dental care type individual person/individual.
QtM, MD
Did I hang enough qualifiers on that yet?
Oh yeah, see a dentist tomorrow too!
I heard milk soothes aching gums, but IANAD. Just something you might try if all else fails.