So, 72 hours to recover from a tooth extraction is bull crap.
It's been exactly one week. Not only do I still have stitches in, which will likely take at least another week to dissolve, but everything is still sore. And the worse part is the muscle pain.
See the masseter muscle there on the side of the jaw? Yeah, mine was damaged before (#metoo) and having it pried open wide long enough to get two teeth out caused it to spasm down tight. It was so bad I was shaking with pain that entire first day, and only today can I really open my mouth more than one finger wide.
The really bad part is that they prescribed Percocet for the pain and Flexeril for the muscle spasm. Now I do all right on Percocet, I get all kind of loopy and high, and I'm much better off in bed on it, but it wears off after about 6 hours or so with no ill effects. Not so with Flexeril. I get into a depressed, muzzy headed funk that lasts a full 14 hours. If I take it at bedtime it's mid-afternoon the next day before my mood lifts enough for me to manage self care. And every day I take it it gets worse. By yesterday I swear I was starting to feel borderline suicidal. I've had nervous breakdowns before, three times, and I felt like I was pushing a fourth. So no more to that. Last night I just took a Percocet and today I switched to a low dose of Norco and I'm actually focused and productive.
Yes, this stuff can be habit forming. No, I do not have an addictive nature. Yes I will stop in the next day or so. Hopefully after I see the physical therapist today I'll be able to manage the jaw pain on Tylenol during the day and nothing at night. At least that's my goal for this week. After this week the stitches should have dissolved enough to let go and I won't need anything anymore. At least not until I go back in for more work in January.
I can see why people get stuck on this stuff. You have to work at taking care of yourself. If you don't know how you really need to control pain, dental pain is miserable.
As you might guess this has put a real damper on holiday preparations. Add in Kitty having surgery at the end of the month and our annual money crisis hitting early and the Winter Curse is upon us.
(There are no good "winter curse" images. He will have to do.)
So we've decided to spread out the holiday this year. Instead of one big blow out with 12 dozen cookies and a list of movies and all of the gifts at once, we're celebrating Christmas every month through 2018. With one batch of cookies and one "Christmas" movie and one gift, which might be an experience we share by the end of the month or it might be an actual gift. And my miniature tree on the coffee table for the night. Hopefully this will take the pressure off the end of December, so the Curse doesn't bite so hard.
This does mean that I get to re-arrange my crafting schedule, which is completely off the rails. I can already tell you that someone is getting one pillow a month for the first half of the year, with a promise to break it in somehow. Ahem. And maybe a quilt by October and her Christmas stocking by November so it can go up. And I'm probably going to make snickerdoodles for the month because they are someone's favorite and she will be laid up.
And they are soft to chew.
No comments:
Post a Comment