Lately my teeth have been hurting more and more, and I’ve been having intense gnawing stomach pain in the night. Last night I woke up at 1:30 AM with tooth pain and stomach pain.
For three weeks I’ve been taking lots of naproxen and in addition to brushing twice a day with a rapid pain relief toothpaste, I’ve been applying it directly to my teeth and gums several times a day. I’m still having pain in the 6 range almost every day, sometimes multiple times a day.
I’ve used so much of the rapid relief toothpaste that I’ve almost entirely gone through a whole tube of it in just the last three weeks!
This morning at 1:30 AM I decided to google about my stomach pain, since that has been getting worse and worse every night. Turns out it seems like I probably have an ulcer from the three weeks of high doses of naproxen 24 hrs a day. Ugh!
So it was difficult to get going today for my busy day. I had a meeting about NAMI, a dentist appointment, WalMart, and the pharmacy.
The NAMI meeting went really well, except that I somehow volunteered to lead an extra meeting a month… Hopefully we’ll get someone else to start to take it over, but for now at least I’m doing it. But it was a really good meeting and always fun to work with my NAMI folks because we are all so passionate and have great ideas.
Next I headed to the dentist to see about my tooth pain. He examined my teeth a lot, and then did a definitive test. He got a really really cold cotton ball and put it on each tooth individually. When I started to feel pain I raised my arm, and when the pain went away I lowered it.
For most of the teeth in the painful area, it would take about 2 seconds for me to feel pain, and then about 2 seconds for pain to go away once the cold cotton ball was removed. But for one tooth in my really painful area, he held the cold cotton ball on it for 30 seconds and I didn’t feel any pain at all.
This tooth is one that I had a filling in about 1.5 years ago that was a really really deep filling for a really really deep cavity. The dentist told me that most likely that cavity had reached the nerve, and that now the nerve is dead. My pain is probably coming from the nerve decaying up in there. And the pain in my lower jaw is probably referred pain from my upper jaw.
All that means I’ll likely have to get a root canal! He referred me to an endodontist, who was closed today. So I will call on Monday to get an appointment. Not fun news, but like usual Dr. Park and all the staff at the office were super nice and sweet and SO nice about Hestia!
Since the naproxen is giving me an ulcer, he told me to take tramadol that I had left over from my recent surgery, and prescribed me an anti-nausea drug so that I can actually take the tramadol. But I can’t take that when I drive, so I’ll still have to take the naproxen sometimes… Or get Brad to drive me more places. Ugh.
On the way to the pharmacist to pick up my medication, I stopped at Walmart to get chicken for Ollie, more rapid relief toothpaste, and generic mylanta for my ulcer. Hestia was really really good in the store, I was very proud!
Then a quick trip to the pharmacy, where they always get my medications filled in like 10-15 minutes! I love them!!!
Finally I am home and finished portioning Ollie’s meals and catching up on all the work I missed doing during the day. I’m about to take a tramadol and relax for the evening, hopefully in a pain free way!
Of course I got some photos of Hestia at the dentist! She is a white and black Japanese Chin with a smushed nose and googley eyes wearing a galaxy themed vest. I am a woman with long curly brown hair wearing a black top and galaxy leggings that match her vest perfectly!
