I open to the inner depths of my being with courage and compassion


Sunday, April 15, 2007

Miscellany

Starting to feel better pregnancy-wise. Still nauseous, just not so overpowering.

House stuff is slow-going. They started on the foundation this week, but not much progress yet. Hopefully the foundation will be done in a few weeks by the time Mike's project at work is done. Then he and my dad can start on the framing. Mike has a lot of annual saved up so that he can go to work early, work 3/4 time and be home by noon to work for a good portion of the day and we don't have to feel it financially for a few months.

I had put a lot of things off until after the trip to Idaho and was going to be catching up, but this week ended up being about my teeth, and the next few weeks will be as well...so things will continue to be put off for awhile! ("Things" being beating down the clutter in this little place, hopefully for the last time until we get into the house! And doing some Spring cleaning like cleaning carpets and stuff - stuff that makes me feel sane.)

So the deal with my teeth is that I had been going to the dentist for the past year getting check-ups thinking that they were looking at my whole mouth for cavities. Turns out they were only looking at parts of my mouth and so were missing teeth that needed attention! If they had spotted them earlier I probably would have only needed fillings, but now I need 2-3 root canals, and 3-5 crowns (I had a root canal in January that needs a crown, and I may need a 2 1/2 year old crown replaced). I'll find out for sure what I need for EVERY tooth on Tuesday, I may need more fillings, but hopefully no more root canals! The reason it pretty much took over the week is because I was in a lot of pain (beginning on the trip) - it was about a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10. I made an appointment to go to the dentist, the soonest they had was for Thursday. But on Tuesday I went to the doctor to see about getting on antibiotics because I knew I must have an infection. I was in a lot less pain in January when I got the root canal, and needed antibiotics then before I could get it done. I hoped that getting rid of any infection would help with the pain too. The doctor did give me the antibiotics and also gave me permission to use more vicodin than I usually do (usually only about once a week for back pain) for the pain from my teeth. I took more of it on Wednesday while I was waiting for the antibiotics to kick in, which also wiped me out somewhat because it makes me loopy. I was able to get in to the dentist a little earlier on Wednesday and that's when they did some xrays and told me it wasn't looking good and referred me to an endodontist (Tuesday's appointment). They weren't going to do the xrays because of being pregnant, but the risk is low and I wanted them to do it, because I really needed to know what was up with my teeth! On Thursday I didn't use any pain killers because the pain was starting to subside somewhat (always hurts with contact to heat, cold, sweets, and pressure though), and on Friday I had a bad pregnancy sickness day. Saturday the pain was really bad, probably a 9 on a scale of 1 to 10, but I resisted the pain killers - without them the pain spreads to give me an earache, and headache, which then just makes me more tired. Today I gave in, and have been taking them all day - so I've been loopy all day, but at least without the pain I've been able to catch up on cleaning. I can't wait until Tuesday! I just hope the infection is down enough that I can get the worst tooth worked on. I'm going to get a root canal done for the worst tooth on Tuesday since we still have some insurance to cover it, but then for the rest of the teeth I'm making a trip to Mexico in a few weeks. So, that explains to you all how my teeth managed to screw up my whole week. This week I have that appointment on Tuesday, a prenatal doctor's appointment on Friday and a lot of things to do between - starting a new paper route, getting car titles transferred and insurance, getting the oil changed, making arrangements for the trip, etc...so still no time for catching up on that stuff mentioned earlier that I'd been wanting to do since before the Idaho trip! The next week I'm going to Mexico to get my teeth done! So it will still be several weeks until I can start on those things that will help me to feel sane.

Oh, so the deal with Mexico - depending on how much work I need done it would cost in the neighborhood of $5000-$7500 to do here. In Mexico it will cost me $1000-$2000 and that's including the cost of travel. My family's been going there for work for over 10 years with no problems, so hopefully it will be okay! We'll be getting our tax return back just a few days before I leave and it will be paying for my teeth! It was going to help pay down a credit card, but oh well!

Hope you're all doing better than me!

2 comments:

Elizabeth said...

It sounds to me like you have a REALLY crappy dentist. Seriously, I've never known a dentist who would say, "Oops, I wasn't looking at that tooth, I was just looking at these other teeth, so now you're going to have to pay thousands of dollars to fix what would have cost a couple hundred if I'd just done my job right the first time." That's pretty much what they're telling you. My response would be something along the lines of "You're going to do all the work necessary and not charge me a penny, and in exchange, I won't call in a lawyer to sue you for negligence." Then I'd find a better dentist. But I'm not very nice. :)

I hope everything goes well in Mexico. I'm glad you're feeling better!!

Karla said...

I've heard good things from people who get their dental work in Mexico. Maybe i should have considered that! LOL