Hi Friends!
Normally my weekly post goes up on Tuesday afternoons, but instead I got to take an unexpected trip to my dentist… nice. Hopefully tomorrow my face will no longer be aching and I will have the weekly pregnancy update for everyone; until then, here’s my tooth saga:
I dreamt I had a toothache on Monday only to wake up at 3am with a throbbing face. I figured I had just spent the past few hours grinding my teeth so after getting up, eating leftovers, loading the dishwasher and a quick puppy snuggle, I went back to bed figuring I could just sleep it off.
If only it was that easy. I spent the next 2 hour tossing and turning while my lower jaw throbbed. I slept for about 20 minutes before the pain woke me up again. I ended up taking some tylenol around 6:30 and fell back asleep around 7:30. Waking up around 10:30 my face was no longer throbbing but it was still pretty achey. I spent the rest of the day hoping the pain would just go away, but to no avail. While the pain was no longer as intense as it was at 3 am, I was still pretty miserable.
If you don’t know, I hate the dentist. I loathe any and all dental work. I used to cry every.single.time. I was at the dentist until about the age of 22. I wish I was kidding. I take really good care of my teeth, in fact I floss twice a day, use a flouride rinse, and brush regularly, but alas, the meds that keep my lungs healthy also destroy my poor teeth.
I called my OB’s office to get their opinion on getting fillings while pregnant. I had a feeling one of my many fillings may have cracked. The last thing I wanted to happen was have my fillings fall out so that eating hurt– I have enough trouble eating as it is, never mind adding in some mouth pain!
OB said to get it fixed and said if I needed something stronger than tylenol for pain I could call them back and they could call something in. The high risk OB’s are so relaxed, sometimes annoyingly so! Next call was to the dentist where we scheduled an appointment for today.
I saw the dentist today and it turns out I was most likely grinding my teeth/clenching my jaw during sleeping, but it looks like it had irritated an air pocket that had formed when a slight piece of composite chipped out of a filling. She was able to drill the surrounding composite and refilled it with some ketac – which doesn’t expand and contract like composite does (it also happens to be extremely bright white!).
The dentist also filed down the tooth next to the fixed composite tooth since it looked like that was where my teeth hit the hardest when biting down. Basically, she made my bite a little more even. She also checked all surrounding teeth for any signs of decay which I had none- there’s a first time for everything I suppose!
The goal should be to not have any pain in a few days and then after the baby is born I can return and she’ll file away some of the ketac and place tooth-colored composite over it. And if the pain lingers? I’ll try a mouth guard at night and if that doesn’t help… well, looks like I’ll just have to make another date to my favorite place in the world.