May the muffins be forever in your favour.My productivity MIGHT be a little impaired in the next few weeks..... · 2:35pm Aug 25th, 2023
I was at the dentist yesterday. Because of a particular, severe pain in the entire right half of my mouth. I thought of something rather benevolent as the cause, but as it is the case so often, reality is much worse. It turned out that my upper-right wisdom tooth is making problems. It caused a huge, blue swelling on my gums right next to it and that is where the pain comes from. According to the dentist I saw yesterday, the only way to fix this is to get the tooth removed. How's that for a six sentence horror story? It's not even the Dark Season yet.....
On Monday, I have an appointment with my general physician to get clearance for a general anesthetic at another dentist nearby. The problem with my wisdom teeth in particular is that hardly anything is left of them, so in order to be able to pull them out, the dentist very likely has to cut open my gums first. And then he will pull at my wisdom teeth and remove them, when there is already an open wound. This process is going to be immensely painful. So I won't go through this while being awake.
I don't know how much general anesthetic will cost me yet and I am not sure if my health insurance will cover any of it, but this is my least concern at the moment. I do have emergency savings. My bigger concern is the pain that will come with that treatment. I want to sleep while that happens.
I don't have an appointment for that surgery yet and I don't yet know if all my wisdom teeth at once will get removed or only the one that causes trouble, for now. Since I will sleep during what would otherwise be a painful and traumatizing surgery, I might be just as productive as always afterwards. But I'm also doing this for the first time, so I can't tell if there will be pain in the days following the removal(s) or how well painkiller medication will help against it.
This is only a heads-up. I don't know if it will all be done in one go or if there will be a few appointments spread out over several weeks. In the worst case, I will recover for a few weeks in-between multiple dentist appointments. In the best case, it happens all at once and I will only be out for a few days.
For now, I will try to keep going with releases as usual, even though I'm already under huge pain that my current medication only slightly reduces. Working on my writing also distracts from the pain a bit and I will continue as long as I can. But I wanted to let you know that my output might be affected over the next few weeks.
Challenging times are ahead.
Stay easy as a filly!
~ Fluttercheer
It's a pity that you don't live in my country, where I had my upper left wisdom tooth removed. If you translate it into dollars, then it cost me $ 12 two injections of anesthesia, and the removal is free. I wish you a speedy recovery!
5743827
Thank you!
The removal is free where I live, too (Europe), and so are the anesthetic injections. The problem with the injections here in my country is that they never work. Usually, I still feel a lot of the pain, so I can only assume that the dentists here just don't give you enough. In other cases, I had dentists getting to work instantly after the shot, without giving the anesthetic time to take effect. Or they let me wait too long, until the anesthetic had already started to wear off again.
Each time I got anesthetic injections, they didn't help with the pain and I still felt nearly everything. I will definitely demand something more drastic this time.
Oof, that sounds rough. I had to have a molar taken out once, and while the operation itself was straightforward enough (no problems with anaesthetic in this particular case), the aftereffects were murder on my mouth. Like, I was spitting blood for a week. I sincerely hope yours is nowhere near that horrible and goes much more smoothly.
5743841
That's very reassuring.
Now I wonder how much blood I will spit.