River Recounts Her Mom's Struggles With A Bad Tooth

Last week our mom's face blew up.

It started innocently on Sunday when she had a toothache. We felt terrible for her. Cavities can be a bother. We were in the middle of a three day weekend. Mommy would not be able to go to the dentist until Tuesday because of Martin Luther King Day. Suddenly Evan Meechum seemed like a sound thinker.

Mommy suffered all day Sunday while watching the AFC championship game without her favorite team, the Patriots, playing for the first time in 8-years. It was like watching Jeopardy without Ken Jennings. It didn't seem right.

 We regret not appreciating Monday as much as we should have. It was the last day before the impeachment trial began. After that day, the networks showed the same annoying program featuring old people arguing about peaches. I had a hard time watching it, and my mouth is beautiful. I don't know how mommy survived with a painful mouth and bad television.

On Tuesday, Mommy went to the dentist but did not get any relief, but she did get some antibiotics. The dentist said that she had an infection and a crack in her molar.  He told her she needed to wait for the infection to subside before the tooth could be extracted, or she could have a root canal. The dentist also said she could have implants. I don't know what that had to do with a toothache. Maybe if she had implants, no one would be looking at her face and see she was missing a tooth.

That night she had pain like seldom had before, and given that she has had multiple knee operations including two replacements, rotator cuff surgery, and migraine headaches, that is something. Her face swelled up on the left side like it was stuffed with watermelon rines.  By Thursday, it was so severe she had to go back to the dentist. He gave her pain pills and told her to go to the oral surgeon down the street to make an appointment for a root canal. The surgeon took one look at her, put her in his chair, and did a partial procedure. The tooth was too far gone to do a full one.  She would still have to have it extracted. She went from two options to none.

The swelling on the side of her face had lessened, but her it was like a flushed toilet bowl. By morning it would fill up again.  

She was told to make an appointment with another oral surgeon to have the cracked molar removed. She was hoping it would be done the following week, but the woman who answered the phone at the office showed little sympathy for Mommy's plight and scheduled her appointment five weeks later.

After seven days, the swelling had gone down some, but she still looked like she had a pinch between her cheek and gums.   The tooth did not hurt, but her cheek had small bumps on the inside that hurt in the extremes, and she could barely open her mouth to swallow.

 A week after first going to the dentist mommy ran out of antibiotics.  Her face swelled up like Buddy Hackett making a hot air balloon impression.  It hurts so much that waterboarding seemed like a gentle massage by comparison.

She called her regular dentist, who was stunned that the oral surgeon they recommended had not extracted her tooth yet.   He prescribed a stronger antibiotic and helped Mommy get an appointment extraction on the following Wednesday.  

Yesterday the terrible tooth was finally removed, and my mom is on the road to recovery. It has been a hard time for all of us.  I have even missed naps! We hope the rest of the winter passes without any more drama and pain for all of us.