You know that song, bring on the rain? Well, I've had a lot of rain this year, and...I'm not thirsty anymore. I could handle a dry spell.
Last week Shane started getting a mega toothache around Wednesday...at least that is when it started to hurt really bad. I knew it couldn't be a good thing for him to have a toothache under a tooth that had a crown on it, because that tooth had already had a root canal, and shouldn't have hurt. It also wasn't a good thing that the tooth that was hurting was the molar at the very back of his mouth. By Friday I told him he really needed to call the dentist, so he did, and got an appointment for today, since they aren't in the office on Fridays.
You know how sometimes you get little thoughts niggling in your brain with information that you learn from...of all things...a movie? Well, I kept thinking of the movie Ghost Town. We have the edited version so we watch it and laugh quite a bit. Anyway, in the movie he is looking at a mummy corpse and talks about how he thinks the mummy died from an abcessed tooth...and that's pretty much all I could think about as Shane's pain got more intense...
So, on Saturday I called our dentist's emergency paging number, and got an antibiotic and painkiller for Shane to take.
Then today came. He went to the dentist, got bad news, and came home to tell me. The abcess is under TWO teeth. The infection is eating away at his jawbone. He has two choices...he can go to a specialist and have another root canal redone on the tooth, and have the infection cleaned out, and hope it doesn't come back...which has a 60-70% success rate, or they can pull the two teeth out and scrape out the infection.
The dentist was glad that he had come in, and had basically told him that if he had let it go the infection would have eaten away at his jaw bone until...you guessed it, he could have died just like the mummy on Ghost Town. See, who says you can't learn anything from a fictitious movie? Hmm? (I know, kind of a morbid sense of humor, but humor is pretty much the only way I can deal with all the crazy things going on in our lives right now...)
The dentist also told Shane it was imperative that he finish the antibiotic prescribed, and to not make a decision about what to do today, but to think about it and then decide. It is difficult to decide when both options equal lots of money, but the alternative is definitely worse.
After all the psychotic things that have happened this year, it is hard to believe it is still only September. I'm glad I have free play tickets to go see a play this Saturday. I need some free entertainment!
3 comments:
Holy cow! I am so sorry. At least you found the problem before it became life threatening. When it's all over, maybe we can bring him a shake while he is recovering. :) Isn't that what you do for something like this? People brought me shakes when I had my wisdom teeth out.
I LOVE Ghost Town... I thought that movie was cute and hilarious. :) And Michael has a crown that's bothering him... so now I'm freaked out too... I'd better make a dentist appointment for him!
That's too bad! Teeth can really mess up your happiness, huh? We've had our share of bad teeth in our family and a few close calls, too, and still struggle with a few kids's mouths.
I like the idea of a shake, though. In fact, that sounds pretty good right now!
Isn't it interesting how things you see in movies come back to memory in other situations? I've had that happen a lot. Like in Unbreakable, when the breakable guy tells Bruce Willis to go to the train station and stand in the crowd and pay attention to what he feels. The funny thing is that THAT is what we're supposed to be doing with the Gift of the Holy Ghost...discerning right from wrong. Kinda weird!
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