See! My faith in drugs has been rewarded. Cilit Pennacilin - Bang, and the pain is gone!
Also, I’ve lost almost 1/3 of a stone! If it stays off, that will be back to what I was when I was 21 :O
I’ve been pretty lucky with my health, all things considered! and appart from glandular fever during my A-Levels and breaking my arm playing football at uni, I’ve been OK. About a year ago, I had my first filling which was flagged up as being needed on a checkup. The procedure was straight forward enough, a quick jab to numb to mouth and 10 minutes of poking around with scarey looking tools and I was out, no problems. That is until 2 days ago.
Tuesday morning after brushing, I feel a twinge under the tooth I had filled which is still there by the time I’m at work. By lunchtime it has become too painfull to eat but not too noticable as long as my mind is off it. I’m able to gingerly munch on a few chips (Joy is away!) for dinner before going to bed. The pain hits me at 3am. I’m not sure why it is so sudden, but it wakes me up and I can’t get back to sleep. Apparantly dental pain is right up there will gall stones with being one of the most painful conditions you can get, and I can totally believe this. It seems to come in waves that seem to me in time with your pulse and does not let up or subside.
There is only one solution - Drugs. If there is one thing I have no confidence in, it’s alternative medicine and natural remedies. I understand that much of it is fair trade, but when I’m in pain like this I would rather munch a load of pills that GlaxoSmithKline have manufactued from ground up orphans as long as they offer some form of relief. Unfortunately, the only drugs I can find in the bathroom are contraceptive pills which although I supposed are a form of pain relief will not suffice so I drive to Tescos.
The paracetamol are supposed to taken 2 every 4 hours, with no more than 8 per day. By lunchtime I’ve gone through this barrier, whats worse my dentist is not back until tomorrow (Thursday) so I have another 24 hours until an appointment. By the time I arrived there today, I had not eaten anything for 48 hours and if I knew it would have cured it, I would honestly have pulled that tooth out myself.
I think this is what had happened. The filling was not sufficient and my tooth had become infected causing an abscess. The short term treatment is more pain killers and a few days course of anti-biotics to kill the infection. This isn’t the news you want to hear when you are 36 hours in to non-stop agony and things still haven’t improved by the evening. Joy makes me some soup though, which makes me feel a bit cheerier. Finally, about an hour ago, I think the pain is beginning to subside (hopefully for good), but we’ll only know by the morning! The perminent treatment starts in 2 weeks where they remove the nerve in preparation from root canal treatment on the tooth 
The next problem is whether my liver survives the barrage of pain killers I’ve been throwing at it for the last couple of days….