For something like six months now, I’ve had a nagging tooth ache; I’ve been to the dentist five times to try to get it sorted out and each time it seemed like all he was willing to do was poke it around a bit, take an x-ray, scratch his chin and ask me to make another appointment to have it treated (whereupon the same thing happens again; lather, rinse, repeat.
So I had an appointment booked for the 6th of Jan, where he really was going to sort it out, really; only trouble is that in the last week it got steadily worse and yesterday evening, I experienced an explosion of quite exquisite agony; waves of intense pain washed over my entire head to the extent that, at times, I couldn’t see or think; I spent most of last night pacing about clutching my head or curled in a foetal position, whimpering.
Cut a long story short; I phoned the dentist, he took me straight in and treated the tooth (only now it’s a root canal filling - six months ago it probably wouldn’t have been so drastic) - apparently one of the roots was infected, the other was still alive, which was why it was so painful.
So I’m now free of pain and it’s like there’s been a loud, irritating noise for the last few months that I’ve simply accepted as part of the background, only now, there’s suddenly silence and the world is all at once a brighter, happier, softer, warmer friendlier place.
That’s about it really; there’s no pleasure quite like the sudden absence of pain.
[sub]And OK, yes, I’m English and I have less-than-perfect teeth. Thank you.[/sub]
Ouch! Those are the worst. When I was about 16, one of my right upper premolars developed a cavity that suddenly hurt like hell one night. It had hit the nerve, which then become very irritated. Eventually it toughened up, but it wasn’t until about 3 years later that I could finally get it pulled.
I had the same thing happen to me. Worst pain I’ve ever had. My co-worker also had it, she said it was worse than child birth.
It’s the pressure that make it so bad. My quack of a dentist sent me to a quack of an oral surgeon, and my tooth was ripped out. But I didn’t care. The process was gory, drawn out, and done with primitive tools. But when he finally dug down and got a good grip on the root and yanked…
It popped like a cork, and what came out stank and sprayed in a mixture of puss, blood, and chunks of tooth and gum.
Not a toothache anecdote but the “pleasure of the absence of pain” happened for me with an injection of painkiller for a kidney stone on the move. Before the injection I wanted to die, 5 mins after it I was ready to party.
I have felt this very thing, and sometimes more than once a month.
I have always had debilitating menstrual cramps. When I was younger, they were so bad I could barely walk. The cramps went from my middle back to knee and felt like someone was scraping a fork through my uterus. And they lasted for DAYS!
With the introduction of Naproxin Sodium though, it has been so much easier. When the the pill kicks in, the pain stops within minutes and I feel a cold flash, almost like someone attached a ice water IV, and all the hair on my body stands up, and the pain is gone. There is truely no better feeling than the absence of pain. I wish I had these things in high school…
And now they’re saying that it can give you heart attacks.
I had root cannel done a couple of months ago I was 3 weeks into my first quarter at UCSB (transfer student) I went up to San Louis Obispo to see some friends of mine for the weekend on the way down I got one hell of a tooth ach. I kept on waiting for the pain to go away and it never did, my only relief from the pain came from putting ice directly on the tooth, it made what should have been a very fun weekend miserable.
I didn’t get drilled until the following Tuesday, after the root cannel was done I was sore, cranky and a drowsy, but that was nothing compared to the toothache.
The cyincal part of me wants to say it’s because he gets more money for more serious treatments (as well as all those x-rays) - I don’t pay directly for treatment; I’m on an insurance-type thing called DenPlan, but he gets paid by them for each specific treatment. It’s probably closer to the truth though to admit that the dental profession is seriously overburdened right now; it’s very difficult to change dentists simply because it’s really hard to find any practices that are taking on new patients; those that are taking on new patients are often doing so by stretching out their appointments diary (which is part of the problem I just experienced - seems there are only two kinds of dental appointment:
-Emergency - come in right away and we’ll fit you in
-Book it up and we’ll see you in six weeks.
Golden! I feel like I’m walking on air. Peace and goodwill to the whole human race.
Sounds more like you have a less-than-perfect dentist. I have a fairly high tolerance for pain, *except * for toothache. I’d be pretty angry at that dentist for not addressing this problem straightaway, before it abscessed.
