Adventures in Pain Management

Some of you closer to me know I had my last wisdom tooth out last Friday, Labor Day weekend. It’s been a bit of an adventure, I’ll try to keep it brief.

Extraction went normally….I guess. I never did see the doctor. Except for the fact that I had a hole in my jaw where a tooth used to be, I’d never guess anything happened. Very little pain over the weekend. NO visible swelling. I’m shocked, it was impacted and I was expecting the worst.

They prescribed Vicodin for me. I’ve never taken it, I’ve heard gloriously wonderful stories about it, though. My neighbor has back problems and when she takes hers, she gets hyper and has to clean the house. The pharmacist said it can cause euphoria. Sounds good to me. I took it at noon, along with the 3 ibuprofen they said I should also take every 6 hours.

Nausea. It gave me the worst nausea I’ve ever had. It was a friendly nausea, the kind that cuddles up on your tummy and just stays there forever and does nothing but get worse. And it hit almost at the 6-hour mark when I should have taken another dose. I decided I wasn’t going to take another, pain be damned. I’d rely on the ibuprofen.

Good idea, the ibuprofen worked wonders for me. Saturday and Sunday went by with little pain. Sunday we actually went to Ikea and Wegman’s in Baltimore for a little jaunt.

Then on Monday, the pain started getting worse in the afternoon. I was getting a goodly amount of ‘breakthrough’ pain at the 5-hour mark of my ibuprofen regimen.

Tuesday, a lot more. I called the dentist because I knew I shouldn’t be having more pain at that point. They said yeah, come on in.

Dry socket. Joy. So I went in and they inserted a special medicated gauze into the socket. Not painful at all, it actually has a numbing agent. That was Tuesday.
This morning, I went back and had the dressing replaced.

This evening, I apparently swallowed the dressing with dinner because it just ain’t there anymore.

I’ll call tomorrow morning. I’m hoping I don’t have any more pain, maybe they won’t need to see me again. Either way, I go back on Friday for a standard follow-up.