Tooth-ache and other jawing motions

There is but one success -- to be able to spend your life in your own way. Christopher Morley

I have been nursing, or unnursing, however you look at it, a sore jaw for the past month. Okay, not just sore, attention riveting pain that casts a black outlook on my outlook!

It has gotten so bad that on Friday night, while sitting with Liseanne, my youngest daughter, watching a movie at home, I finally said, "Honey, I think you need to drive me to the emergency." I'd taken an anti-inflammatory an hour before, and then another and nothing seemed to be working. The pain had me in tears. We quickly got in the car, got to the parking lot outside emergency and as we walked in I declared, "Honey, We don't have to go in. The pain is abating."

She looked at me in consternation, not quite believing me (she knows how doctor adverse I am).

"No, seriously," I insisted. "It's abating. I just waited too long to take a pill so it had to work harder to make the pain go away."

We drove back home and all was 'well', though she did insist on not going on later as planned.

Now, it's not that I haven't sought medical attention for this pain. I went to the dentist and the verdict was, "Look Ma! No cavities." There also doesn't appear to be any infection or abscess or any other signs of where the distress that would make one believe the pain is tooth related.

My doctor says, if it's not your teeth, it must be... and names some nerve disorder I'm positive it isn't. The cure for this condition is a very harsh drug with not so nice side-effects. It's not a remedy I want to experience.

What I do want to experience is a pain-free jaw. It has definitely shadowed my outlook for the past month. Anti-inflammatories work -- but in the quantity needed to keep the pain at bay, they too have undesirable side-effects. I am on strict medical orders to not go over the limit which is laughable if it didn't hurt so much at times!

I returned to the dentist last week and he thinks it could be a molar that was crowned several years ago. When he taps on it, it is sensitive to touch. And so, in an effort to alleviate the pain, and hopefully solve the problem, I will get a root canal on the tooth he thinks might be the problem, even though it doesn't appear on the x-ray.

Wish me luck.

In the meantime, precious sleep is being lost -- and I am scrounging it where ever I can. Which means, I may or may not be posting tomorrow since I never know when the pain will awaken to steal me away from dreamland!

It's not all bad. It's definitely helped put me on the path to losing weight as eating seems to be a big contributor to the onset of pain in my jaw! :)

and, I've gained an appreciation of people with chronic pain. It is not nice!