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12687

It has been raining like crazy here. With the exception of two or three days, we’ve had rain solid for 2 weeks.

I also just bought a house. And you can probably see where this is headed. So as it turns out luck was definitely on my side. After a week of rain every day we had our internet go out. Woke up one morning and nothing. So I went downstairs and checked things out. No upstream connection, the wifi was working just fine. I had to go to work so told my wife to call the cable company.

Fast forward to when I get home. The internet still out, still its a connection issue. So I go behind the TV to where the cables are, and went to see what the issue was. As soon as I stepped back there, wet feet. After stripping back the carpets i locate the source, and it’s entering the floor from the floorboards, about 2-3 feet from the outside wall. The interior wall butts up against a bathroom downstairs, so I check the bathroom, to see if there is a leak there as well, or if it was the shower. Nope, nothing. It’s possible water was on the floor there, but as it is underneath the shower, I have no way of checking.

Wonderful.

So the next step is identifying the source. Our current swamp like conditions made outside intrusion likely, so that was my next stop. I went outside to look for standing water, or other indicators, and I found one. Turns out that, right where the interior wall meets the outside wall, along the foundation there was a crack that had been patched over in some way. Well, that patch was not holding up. One side had peeled back completely, and I could see the crack underneath the material. Problem located.

So now I get to figure out how to solve that lovely mess. But better to find out soon, and lucky that the internet went out or i’d have likely not even noticed.

12688

Friend of mine had two teeth in her mouth get hella infected. She’s super socially anxious and afraid of inconveniencing anyone, and moreover, is going through a divorce (so lost insurance, and her new job makes her nothing compared to what the ex made). . . which meant she sat on increasing tooth pain for weeks an weeks without telling anyone until it was super bad. And super badly infected.

She just had her surgery–paid for by friends mostly, cuz yay healthcare in America–and is completely zonked out on the codeine+tylenol pills right now while folks take shifts looking after her. I did my part for a few hours yesterday, and it turns out that stoned post-dental-surgery patents are exactly as delightful as all the Youtube videos would have you believe. Be more fun, Eric! :P

12689

I’m told by my mother (who drove me home after the procedure) that after having my wisdom teeth removed, I was singing the song “Passionate Kisses” by Mary Chapin Carpenter to everyone. And I don’t even know that song.

12690

[quote=“ArmandoPenblade, post:12688, topic:30028, full:true”]

[quote=“Eric_Majkut, post:12684, topic:30028”]
Had to have an impacted, infected wisdom tooth removed today. The whole thing was way faster/easier than I expected. It will surely suck a lot more once the left side of my face is no longer numb, but I have some Vicodins for that :D
[/quote]Be more fun, Eric! :P[/quote]

Read the thread. For those of you not aware John Drake recently hurt his achilles tendon. He never drinks/does drugs/etc so it’s been kind of hilarious watching him on Twitter lately after he’s taken his pain meds.

12691

I was very confused at first :P

But the threading on the second tweet made it make much more sense :)

12692

Toothaches are no joke. I always tell people that quibble about going to see a dentist when they’re in pain, that tooth infections can kill you if left untreated. Andy Hallett, the guy that played Lorne in Angel, died as a result of his tooth infection weakening his heart.

12693

Well luckily there was no abscess or anything and I’m on antibiotics now, so there is no/little infection that I’m aware of in my case. As far as the pain goes though, wow! I’ve had tooth issues before but this one takes the cake. There were times when the pain was almost transcendental (is that a pun? :P), as in like, I almost felt like I was outside of my body while curled up in a ball in my bed groaning in agony. It REALLY sucked. And of course every doctor is afraid to prescribe even the slightest thing for pain relief nowadays, so I lived with that for five days until I could get in to see my dentist, and then another day to see the oral surgeon. I’m horrified to think of how this would have gone if this were 150 years ago. Geez. Talk about nightmares.

12694

When I was 10 years old I went to the dentist and had the usual xray. He saw something unusual. So next visit he used a device with two prongs on one of my front teeth. First he tried it at 1 on the dial. I didn’t feel anything. Then he tried 5 and eventually 10. He told my mother, this tooth is dead. If it was still live ten would have put him through the roof.

This is how I ended up having my first root canal at the age of ten.

He drilled into the tooth. Man, the smell was amazing. It squirted rotten bone onto the blue bib. He then used a hypo to irrigate it with bleach solution. Did it a few times. Then he put in a temporary filling.

That night I started to feel the pain. By the morning the left side of my face was swollen as a pumpkin. I was in the worst pain in my life. Literally screaming. Mom called the dentist. The service answered. But she wasn’t going to be denied. Eventually we went to the dentist’s office on a Saturday morning. He opened it for me.

He removed the temp filling. Boom, rotten squirt again. More drilling. More bleach. Now he used a thing that looked like a nasty screw to open the hole more. This time he said he couldn’t close the hole. It needed to drain.

The next two weeks were hell. Even though the abscess was draining I had an incredibly swollen face. I was taking two kinds of antibiotics but no pain pills. Not for a ten year old. Just ice packs and misery.

Finally the swelling went down. That’s when he said he would put an antibiotic sliver in the tooth. Then he would put a temporary filling in as well. And the next day I was at a dental surgeon’s office. There I was told that they would scrape out the dead tissue. Then they would fill the space with gold foil. Because otherwise, amalgam might irritate the bone and cause more issues.

Here I am. 10 fucking years old. Scared as I have ever been in my life.

Dental guy: We can’t give you gas. The mask would be in the way. So we’re going to shoot you full of lidocaine.

And he starts to use a needle all over my fucking mouth. I mean EVERYWHERE. Imagine a potato chip cut on the roof of your mouth. Now do it 35 times.

Eventually I go numb. But not deaf. He cuts my gum line. It sounds like CCCCFKKKKK. Then his partner pulls the gum up over my head. Okay, kidding, but still. Then he gets a drill out. Not a high speed dentist drill… Some old burr sander. And off we go.

The smell is incredibly bad. How do i know? I smell it. And he and his partner occasionally say, “Oh my! That’s bad.”

Or they gag a bit.

Eventually it’s over. I have a green bib full of rotten bone matter on my chest. Then they start to sew me up. And the lidocaine is wearing off. So I feel it. But my mouth is cranked open by some weird device. So I can’t say anything. Just feel a needle and a suture slipping through my face.

12695

Good lord man! That’s cruel and unusual :( What year are we talking about here? My mother is 64 and was telling me stories about the dentist using ether on her, and it making her incredibly nauseous, and how she still has trouble going to the dentist nowadays because of the awful memories of throwing up from ether and how sick it made her.

I’ve had two root canals. One of them abscessed. The smell when he drained it was not something I was prepared for. It took me a second or two to realize where it was coming from. And then it hit me. And it’s really hard to try not to gag when there’s a bunch of surgical gear and two pairs of hands in your mouth. UGH.

I feel like dentistry is another one of those things that proves there is no God. Or if there is, he’s a really sadistic motherfucker.

12696

Could be worse. They used to try to jam other people’s teeth in your mouth.

12697

You win the SQUIRM award for the day, because that was hard for me to read. I’ve had my own nasty dental adventures, but not quite to that degree.

12698

Ugh, I had a similar experience when I was 11, though minus the smells (that I can remember). Bad abscess in upper incisor, far enough up that it felt like it was colonizing my sinuses. Painful as hell, everything all wobbly in its socket, lots of swelling. Over Christmas, so it had an extra week and a half of fermentation.

Mom forces an appointment on the dentist the moment he gets back after New Years. Dentist thinks the nerve is certainly dead. Tooth hasn’t been informed of this and is still hot. Mom reports that when I started yelling a few minutes into the drilling, the entire waiting room sat bolt upright in unison, like something out of a nature documentary.

My recent root canal wasn’t nearly that interesting.

12699

Smells aren’t something you think of in a surgical situation like that. I have a friend who had LASIK, the version that uses a laser. He said the worst part was being able to smell his own eyeball burning as the laser did its work.

12700

Since the hospital lost my endoscopic biopsies taken on day 3 of my admission, they’ve just been “guessing” at what they’re treating. Latest theory is it is candida yeast. But the medication they need to use conflicts heavily with my anti-depressant. They asked how I wanted to go about handling this, ie.

  • Fast wean off, go with no anti depressant start the 3 week course of antibiotics.
  • Fast wean off offset with an increasing dose of another antideoressant, when the switch is complete antibiotic is given for 3 weeks.
  • Do nothing and talk to GP later on. Can barely swallow now and swallowing items the size of a pea are challenging and painful.

I chose option 2 as I don’t want something growing unchecked for 2 weeks. And going with no antidepressant while sick and on surgerybfecovery mdoe is not a time to play mental games,p andI chose option 3 because being vulnerable and sick is not at a time to play mental meds

I. didn’t feel right today, come to find out they axed my antidepressant with no wean down, no other anti depressant to pick up the slack. I am tried yet can’t sleep.

12701

I too had a bad early dentist experience. It left me with a phobia of the dentist office. I’ve gotten much better about it than I used to be, but even the crew at my dentist office now knows that I need a bit of extra care.

If there aren’t handgrips in the dentist’s chairs before I sit down, there are afterward.

12702

Man, what a story.

So that’s what cacodemon dentistry feels like.

12703

This can be serious, as in really screw with your head sort of thing. If you don’t have someone watching you, please consider it. They should never take you off a antidepressant cold turkey like that. It can cause serious withdrawal symptoms.

As for dentistry, my sister, mom and dad have all had root canals. I am terrified of them. I ask my dentist all the time how close I am to having one because it sounds horrific. He tells me not worry and the handful of fillings I have are doing fine. These stories do not ease my mind.

12704

A root canal really isn’t all that bad if it’s performed promptly and correctly. You’re just getting a bunch of stories here about times things went wrong. Both of mine were actually fine, well except for the gross smell during the one. But I was completely numb and didn’t feel a thing. It’s a little weird to hear some of the noises and feel the pressure when they push/pull on the tooth and stuff, but you don’t feel any pain during it. There’s a pinch when they inject you to numb you up, but even that is only for a moment and not really that bad. A million times better than living with a rotten tooth :)

12705

Similar to Eric, I’ve had a few. They are not horrible. In fact, the procedure has gotten a lot better. The part that has changed was you used to have to wear a temp crown after the root canal until your real crown came in. The last one I had was all done while in office on the visit. They image the tooth using some software that recreates it, then make it on site, even getting a shading match to your other teeth, then they fit it and modify it if needed. The actual root canal part really isn’t that bad, like Eric mentioned, they numb you beforehand and go to town after.

It’s a longer visit to the office, but they do root canals and crowns often. Extractions … those are not easy. Worry less about the root canals.

12706

I still got a temp crown for my one crown and one root canal plus crown from last year :(

But yeah, nothing to fear from the root canal. Abscesses tho