Monday, February 5, 2018

Where was the Tooth Fairy?

My pregnancy has been no joke. From the never ending morning sickness, to the massive 3rd trimester nose bleeds to the swelling in my hands and feet. It just hasn't really given me a break. Then in the second trimester, I had the unthinkable happen. One of my wisdom teeth broke off in half. Many years ago, when all of my wisdom teeth came in, I was told that I was the 1 in a 1000 that they grew in perfectly. Then about 10 years ago, I got a tiny cavity in the one located on the top/right side of my face.

At the time, my dentist who I had gone to for years said, "No problem! Let's just put a little filling in it." So that's what we did! And honesty, I had never had another problem with it. Well until about 4 months ago. I'm driving home from work and having a late evening hair appointment. I go to spit out a piece of gum and I'm like wow, my tooth feels different when I ran my tongue across it. I run my tongue across it again and I know. Something is very different and wrong with my tooth. Cue immediate freak out.

It's after 7:00 p.m. on a weekday and I call the dentist. All the phone does is ring and ring and ring. After about the 15th ring, I can finally leave a frantic message of please call me immediately because I have a dental emergency. I'm left to freak out all night. I think, I asked everyone I knew to look into my mouth and tell me what my tooth looks like. We even tried to fit an iPhone into my mouth to get a good look at it. We just weren't for sure how bad the damage was and we weren't going to know till I could get in to the dentist.

Thankfully, the next morning the dentist called me. I explained what was going on with my tooth and that I was 6 months pregnant. They asked me if I had my letter from the doctor that said I could see a dentist. Let me tell you what, I was so happy to have that letter from the first OBGYN appointment. I never had even thought I would need it. Well I'm glad I kept it in the folder because it outlined what they were and weren't allowed to do. So they set an appointment for the next day. They were sorry but they just couldn't see me till the next day.

This was also going into a holiday weekend and it was now Thursday. We were suppose to leave town and here I was with a broken wisdom tooth trying to figure out if it was going to break off even more or if it was going to start sending serious pain throughout the rest of my face. I went to the appointment and I was hoping and praying they could salvage the tooth. I figured they could just cap it until after I had given birth. The dentist does the xrays and I'm told, there's no way they can save the tooth. Apparently in those 10 years, debris had started to get under the filling and it had decayed the tooth hence why it broke off (which I pin pointed to earlier in that day while I was eating a grilled cheese).

They wanted to pull it immediately.

WHAT? NO! I'm going out of town. So I got a stay of execution till the following Wednesday.

They had pre-warned me due to my pregnancy and medication restrictions that I would be numbed but without the epinephrine. The only way I can describe that is like someone basically slapping orajel on your face and then ripping the tooth out. So when Wednesday rolled around my anxiety was at an all time high. I was so scared because I have never had to have a tooth pulled nor had I ever had any dental work done without serious numbing and medication.

Thankfully, the tooth didn't break off as they were pulling it. They get it out within about 5 minutes and got it filled with gauze. They gave me tons of instructions and told me to not spit (which was going to be hard since I was vomiting everyday thanks to morning sickness) to try to avoid dry socket. Over the next few days, the pain sucked. I couldn't take anything stronger than a Tylenol and I didn't even really want to do that because I've been trying to not take anything what so ever while being pregnant.

I was so paranoid about getting dry socket, I got on amazon and bought one of those little dentist mirrors that go in your mouth so I could check the hole. Needless to say, I survived and it was probably the worst experience due to the no pain meds.

1 comments:

The Flynnigans said...

Damn girl, that's crazy! And after all those years of having excellent teeth.... Gosh darn pregnancy. lol