Last week I got some fillings done at a dentist, now I have chronic pain in my upper left jaw. I do not like taking vicodins (I have some left over from a wisdom tooth extraction done a year ago) because even though they are weak vicodins (5/500) and I only take half a pill at a time and I usually only do that 1-2x a day some days of the week they make me groggy and they make me sleep 10-11 hours a night instead of my regular 7 hours.
I can’t keep doing what i’m doing though, which is taking 800mg ibuprofin 2x a day and topical 20% benzocaine 3-4x a day, because its not working that well anymore. I have a pretty high pain tolerance for short, blinding pain but this chronic pain just sucks. What else can I try? I have some tylenol-3s left over from a root canal and i’m trying those instead of vicodins (I’m only taking 1 a day as I don’t want to develop tolerance or use them all up or get the grogginess of the vicodins), but i’m worried i’ll have the same grogginess problem. I made an appointment with the dentist but i’m not in Bloomington right now so I can’t see him until next week.
If I have this pain for months on end and the dentist can’t fix it what should I do (I hope they didn’t permanently screw things up and I don’t need a root canal or extraction)? Should I get a prescription for non-opoid pain killers? what kinds could I ask the dentist for? What other remedies should I try? I hear oil of cloves is good, but I have also heard it causes nerve damage if you use it too often.
I hate dentists. In the last 3 years I have never found a truly competent dentist. Every dentist I’ve had has either recommended work that didn’t need to be done, missed work that did need to be done, screw up work that did need to be done or a combination of the above. I am taking better care of my teeth from now on because I can’t find any good dentists to fix my problems when they go wrong, so I should just avoid problems in the first place.