Life in lessons....

So the pain in the ear got worse over the weekend even after over doing it on Tylenol and Advil (rx strength from the doctor). So I sucked it up and went to the dentist on Monday morning before work as one tooth actually did hurt. After waiting around for a few hours – he has been on vacation for the past week so there was a lot of catching up for him to do – I finally got the tooth in question checked out. It looked good, as did the other teeth – no signs of cavities. But, considering that I don’t complain of pain unless it is really bad (I am one of those people with a high tolerance to pain) the dentist decided that we should take some x-rays. I knew that I was in trouble when everyone in the office crowed around my x-ray and one of his assistants turned to me and asked “Are you sure that you are not ready to die from the pain?” I got out of the chair and went up to the board to take a look at what the big deal was…an abscess…not the thing anyone really wants to hear. It seems that my habit of grinding my teeth caused me to crack a molar and from there it just went down hill. But thankfully, because of the earache it was caught fairly early and the tooth can be saved after a root canal and a new gold cap! (Usually people have to have the tooth pulled).
Here is a picture snatched from the web for an idea of what they were looking at:



The differences between my x-ray and this picture are:
1.It was one of my molars that we were investigating
2. That black mark (or shadow if you would rather) – was just above the molar and it covered the roof of my mouth
So I now have a lovely rx for 2000 mg of penicillin for the next week and then we will proceed with the root canal.