THE TOOTH SAGA ENDS

 

Yesterday, I took y’all’s advice and chatted with a Kaiser MD online as well as with the endodontist’s office. Because of the chest pain, I was encouraged to go to Urgent Care on Capitol Hill. My neighbor Kathy very kindly drove me there and was prepared to wait until I could be sent home. After an hour or so, the RN told me I’d be there for hours so I should encourage my friend to leave the potentially COVID-blessed area and return home. I did and she did.

It’s really hard to describe the pain, but it began in the back of my throat and traveled down my esophagus to a couple of inches below the little indentation in my throat. If I breathed very shallowly, it didn’t hurt much, but if I took a deep breath, on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the worst, the pain was an 8 or 9.

I won’t bore you with the various things they tried, but none of them worked well. The pain could be knocked back to about a 6, but that was it. I had a couple of EKGs and the results were good…my heart is fine. I had a chest x-ray and they saw a “nodule” on that so wanted a CT scan. That was hard because they wanted me to take deep breaths and hold them. The CT scan showed the one nodule and I was told not to be too concerned, but should touch base with my MD and make arrangements to keep a watch to make sure it continues to be nothing.

Before my final paragraph, let me say the nurses and doctors at Kaiser’s Urgent Care were wonderful. They took good care of me, kept me informed and tried very hard to figure out why I was having this pain. If they treat all their patients the way they treated me, and I’m sure they do, they should all be awarded big gold stars or whatever kind of recognition they deserve for doing their jobs in an excellent and very kind way.

Finally, they released me, just in time for son AJ to pick me up on his way home. The only problem was I still had the pain. It was still about a 6. I wasn’t happy that there was no resolution. Plus, I was starving. At home, I ordered a pizza and AJ went to pick it up. I could only eat two pieces, but they were very yummy. I took Tylenol and went to bed about 9:30 pm. I slept well and this morning there is very little pain. I still feel tired, but the pain has left and I’m very happy about that. The only thing I can attribute the pain to is having my mouth held open and stretched as much as possible for more than an hour. I guess it must have been all the muscles and tendons in my mouth and neck revolting.

Thanks for hanging in there with me through the last week…it’s really been a week this tooth has taken out of my life and that sucks. The next time I need a root canal, I’m going to have them remove the tooth. Hopefully that won’t happen too often or I’ll end up being one of those toothless old hags you see now and then. Better toothless than full of pain I say.