Toothache

[The Boston Crab]

The kind of thing that comes and goes over the years, nerves deaden and you just pretend there's no problem except the one time you bite down on a Polo and you know instantly. And then an hour later you're in conversation and the pangs begin. Intermittent but steady, a reliable haunting presence, an existence borne into continuous experience, points plotted sequentially on an increasingly dire graph. Pregnant pauses of hope interrupted by the inevitability of agony. A man has toothache and all the world shall feel his sorrow.

[sponk]

Biting a car is always going to  cause problems with your teeth

[Replies From View]

Teeth are a stupid evolutionary defect.  We should either have teeth or the urgent need to eat great quantities of bricks and glass - not both.

[Norton Canes]

Excuse to take Co-codamol

Neck it

[shiftwork2]

Teeth are a stupid evolutionary defect.

This.  A body part that needs its own doctor who has to continuously screen all his/her patients to see what's gone tits up in the last six months.  Teeth are fucking rubbish.

My nana had all her teeth out as a wedding present.  While this may seem slightly comical in 2019, her generation's eagerness to pull 'em all out (mentioned in The Road To Wigan Pier) makes quite a lot of sense to me.

[Replies From View]

This.  A body part that needs its own doctor who has to continuously screen all his/her patients to see what's gone tits up in the last six months.  Teeth are fucking rubbish.

My nana had all her teeth out as a wedding present.  While this may seem slightly comical in 2019, her generation's eagerness to pull 'em all out (mentioned in The Road To Wigan Pier) makes quite a lot of sense to me.

Slum clearance mentality.  Get yourself a nice set of plastic gnashers for your 21st birthday love.

[Rolf Lundgren]

This.  A body part that needs its own doctor who has to continuously screen all his/her patients to see what's gone tits up in the last six months.  Teeth are fucking rubbish.

An absolute racket. The dentist poked around in my mouth then sat back with pursed lips and sighed. "Looks like you'll need a root canal". Two years later she's never mentioned it again. They only make you come back every six months so they can find more things to bill you for.

[The Boston Crab]

Totally forgot about this. It must have gone five minutes after I posted but some interesting insights.

[QDRPHNC]

My mouth can make two teeth per slot. Why not three? Why not four?

[steve98]

There's no point gettin' angry about it.

[bgmnts]

Soft shite.

[a duncandisorderly]

An absolute racket. The dentist poked around in my mouth then sat back with pursed lips and sighed. "Looks like you'll need a root canal". Two years later she's never mentioned it again. They only make you come back every six months so they can find more things to bill you for.

this. my dentist, a huge nigerian bloke, once did the six-monthly poke-around in my gob before announcing 'nothing to do here. why you waste my time?'. indeed, & mine, good sir.

couple of months ago, a sideways wisdom tooth decided to make a break for it, but with the other teeth in the way, all that happened was that I was in a lot of pain. I'd had the other one out ten years previously, & the dentist (same guy) was sort of expecting this. I have no idea why they didn't just yank it at the same time. apparently that was the thing to do, at one time- get them all pulled in your twenties.
so I ended up at a spanish dentist, because I was in madrid when this flared up. I showed them the picture that's on the wikipedia page for 'impacted wisdom tooth' & said "it's like that- sideways".
they did an x-ray anyway, & sure enough... exactly like the wiki page. he pointed- "there is a nerve under here.... it will get cut off. the toothache will still be there, because that's a different nerve, but you will lose sensation around here.." indicating lower cheek & what's left of a once magnificent jaw-line.
they couldn't do anything in madrid- it's work for a maxilo-facial surgeon, apparently, & I had to be back in london.
so I go to my own dentist, who doesn't even bother with another x-ray but writes out the referral with a shrug. "I've got dental cover at work", I tell him, but he reiterates the position regarding wisdom teeth & dentistry, & tells me the referral is for a maxilo-facial surgery. I talked to the GP at work, who wrote another referral, & told me it would have to be run by the corporate health insurer before being sent to whomever they approved. the corp HI told me "it's dental; that's with a different insurer" [it is] despite my protests. the corp dental insurance people said the opposite. so the referral is still in my bag.
meanwhile, the NHS have got back to me & said I can have an appointment for an initial consultation on 24th july, by which time the tooth's bid for freedom will be over three momths old.

I am down from the maximum allowable (in spain) two grammes a day of ibuprofen, + omeprazol, to about 600mg of ibuprofen a week, mainly because the fucking tooth has given up for now, but I still have no sensation on the right side of my jaw.

I'd get the fucking lot took out & replaced with ivory if it wasn't for these save-the-elephant wankers.

[Glebe]

I was supposed to go back to the dentist ages ago, I may have an abscess or summit where some root canal was done.

[Dr Sanchez]

One of my teeth is fucked and has been for years. Every 6 months or so it will flare up. I'll take paracetamol, ibuprofen and whiskey which helps for a while but eventually the pain gets so bad that I have to go to the dentist for antibiotics.

He says I need a root canal but a surgeon needs to go in and operate on the gum because it's in an odd position.

That's never going to happen of course. So pills and whiskey for life, fellas. Lemmy aint got shit on me.

[Blue Jam]

Had a scale'n'polish last week. Gums seem healthier but my lower incisors (which are especially prone to tartar buildup) are now sensitive AF. Been rubbing Sensodyne toothpaste on them which is doing the trick but FFS, lately my life seems to have been a series of attempts to get healthy that just end up backfiring massively. Cut down on red meat and now my iron levels are low, tried eating more fruit and ended up with acid erosion, and now a routine clean has buggered things up.

I'm just going to live on Greggs sausage rolls and crack from now on.

[alan nagsworth]

Imagine if all people lost teeth as frequently as male users of this forum lose head hair. Brrr.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Thought I'd bump this rather than start CaB's 294th toothache thread, I'd had a minor toothache for about a week and a half but was hoping it'd go away, but on Thursday the pain became so horrendous that even mixing 60mg of codeine and paracetamol was barely touching it. One phone call to 111 later and I had to wait an hour to speak to a dental nurse, then another hour to be for a dentist to call me back, and they promised to see me the next day. At 3pm that day the pain was so intense I arrived 3 hours early, saw the dentist who said the tooth was infected, but it was so severe that she needed to put me on anti-biotics for a week before taking the tooth out next Friday. She gave me two injections to numb the area, and some diclofenac sodium to take along with the codeine, which helped, but yesterday the pain was so severe that after more inanity with 111 I ended up in A&E at 2am and given some morphine.

TL:DR - In short it was the most incredibly severe pain I've ever known, and now I will never miss a dentist appointment again. And I fucking hate dentists with a passion.

[Glebe]

Yikes, sorry to hear it Horsey, hope you've gotten some relief. I need to get my teeth checked after lockdown ends, I have a tooth that I was on the verge of loosing and I get twinges now and again, also had major work a few years back with massive gum infections and root canal and all.

[bgmnts]

I haven't been to the dentist in around a decade and my cavities are surely fucked. Just swore off anything sweet and cold, job done.

But good christ SMBH that sounds bad, i assume if you're getting morphine it must have been hellish.

Can't wait for your "help me i'm addicted to morphine" thread.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Why haven't we evolved teeth that grow back yet? It would fix all the problems that people have mouth wise. Tooth giving you a bit of gip? Pull the fucker out and a new one shall grow in its place. Sharks grow new teeth back, why can't we?

[Small Man Big Horse]

Yikes, sorry to hear it Horsey, hope you've gotten some relief. I need to get my teeth checked after lockdown ends, I have a tooth that I was on the verge of loosing and I get twinges now and again, also had major work a few years back with massive gum infections and root canal and all.

Thanks for that. Seems like eating sets it off, so today I'm on a soup only diet, even when I dipped a bit of bread in it I could feel it starting to get angry.

I haven't been to the dentist in around a decade and my cavities are surely fucked. Just swore off anything sweet and cold, job done.

But good christ SMBH that sounds bad, i assume if you're getting morphine it must have been hellish.

Can't wait for your "help me i'm addicted to morphine" thread.

I last went to the dentist two years ago (once again with toothache, but it was nowhere near as bad) so hoped I'd be good for a couple more years. Apparently not though. And on the pain front I've never known anything like it, as there was a shortage of ambulances they paid for a taxi to take me to A&E, and the bastard driver hit every bump in the road at a ridiculous speed so by the time I got to A&E I was pretty much constantly shrieking in pain. Sadly they didn't give me any morphine to take home with me though, the bastards.

Why haven't we evolved teeth that grow back yet? It would fix all the problems that people have mouth wise. Tooth giving you a bit of gip? Pull the fucker out and a new one shall grow in its place. Sharks grow new teeth back, why can't we?

It's a good question, fortunately the infected tooth is hidden away on the lower right, so when it is taken out no one will notice and I won't need to miraculously grow a new one / have my first false tooth. I'm sure that's only a matter of time though.

[The Mollusk]

I can sympathise. Toothache is indeed horrific, and when I had it bad, it was the worst pain I'd ever endured, and bear in mind that some months prior to this I'd fallen off a moped and had my humerus broken in two when a Ford Mondeo ran over it, so I definitely know pain.

The infected area was like a molten ball of rock and lava which throbbed so hard it felt like it was ten times its actual size and trying to burst out of my head. I was working nights at the time and the pain kicked in after I'd got home from a 10-hour shift and was about to get into bed. I remember pacing around my house for a couple of hours before eventually collapsing on the floor in a heap and sobbing feebly. Awful.

Anyway good luck!

[royce coolidge]

Sorry to hear that SMBH,it truly is one of the worst pains you can have,hopefully when the antibiotics kick in
(Usually around 48 hours) the pain will slacken off.
I had a temporary filling done about a month ago,but it needs pulling and I've been putting it off,this thread will make me book an appointment tomorrow.
Though with Covid the dentist are reluctant as it means they have to close the treatment room for an hour to disinfect,so we'll see.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Thank you both, it's appreciated. And as you both say, the pain is shockingly awful, I too thought I'd suffered as much pain as was possible with the broken leg/knee, but this was something else altogether. And I hope you manage to get it sorted out Royce, it'll definitely be worth it in the long run.

[BlodwynPig]

Try having extreme glaucoma, the pressure so high the eyeball crushes against the skull and the eye socket looks like a shrivelled anus. Immense.

[The Mollusk]

Try having extreme glaucoma

No.

[BlodwynPig]

No.

Useful experiment. Report back on which was worse. Cheers.

[Danger Man]

Thank you both, it's appreciated. And as you both say, the pain is shockingly awful, I too thought I'd suffered as much pain as was possible with the broken leg/knee, but this was something else altogether. And I hope you manage to get it sorted out Royce, it'll definitely be worth it in the long run.

If you'd bothered to watch Marathon Man you'd know that clove oil stops all dental pain.

[Mortimer]

Try having extreme glaucoma, the pressure so high the eyeball crushes against the skull and the eye socket looks like a shrivelled anus. Immense.

How about a separate "what's the most pain you've had" thread. Maybe with a poll. I could set one up but I don't post much and can't be arsed. And probably no one will respond.

Can empathise with the toothache stuff and I've broken bones before but for pain both were trumped by my herniated lumbar disk initially, then subsequent (separate but related) facet joint syndrome. Proper "scream every time you move". The neighbours must have thought I was being murdered.

[Pinball]

Is it safe?