3 hospital visits in 30 hours...

So it all started during my opening shift on Friday morning. I woke up and felt a pain in my ear and felt really nauseous. So I walked to go catch the bus at 4am and stopped 3 times on the way to the bus stop and almost puked. When I got to work I told Sarah, the other shift supervisory that was luckily working that day, (normally we only have one per shift, so I would not be able to leave until I got another shift to come take over) that I felt like throwing up and that I wouldn't last long but I would do as much work as possible until I couldn't work anymore. So I got all of the opening tasks done as quickly as possible which got us ahead a bit, and once we opened the store, I went in back and sat down with my head on the desk. About 20 minutes later Sarah came and informed me that they would be able to handle it without me. So I clocked out and sat with my head down for another 20 minutes or so before I headed home.

When I got home I took way more than the recommended dosage of extra strength Tylenol, and slept for most of the day, when it wasn't too painful to sleep. I threw up a couple of times, and by midnight I decided to call the 24hour nurse line because I wasn't getting better and felt a bump on my jawbone. She said that It sounded like I had an abscess tooth and should get to the hospital within the next hour. Lucky for me, Mandy was gone for the weekend, and most of my friends in Seattle don't have cars or are easily contacted at midnight. So I got my crap together and walked a mile to the Swedish Hospital on Cherry Hill. I got right in but they took 3 hours to actually examine me. By then, the Tylenol had worn off, I was in great pain with a fever and the swelling had tripled at least. I got prescribed some Vicodin and Penicillin for the pain and infection, and I was told to make an appointment with a dentist for Monday. So I got out of there at 5am, took my penicillin and waited for the Vicodin because I didn't have any food, and didn't want an upset stomach. So I walked the mile home and almost started crying for the pain, got home and ate like, 3 crackers and took the Vicodin, then cried from the pain for about an hour and a half until the Vicodin finally kicked in and then I went to sleep for about an hour.

When I woke up I decided to take the other Vicodin they gave me (they gave me two pills but I only took one bcause I have never had it before and didn't know how it would effect me). I then walked a few blocks to Walgreens to get my perscriptions and almost passed out when I got there so I called almost everyone I knew in Seattle, and pretty much everyone was out of town, and I finally got ahold of my 2nd cousin Gail who lives in Ballard. I had her pick me up because I was afraid of passing out as I walked home. So she dropped me off at home and tried to convince me to stay in her extra bedroom at home, but I wanted to be surrounded by my home so I refused her offer. So again, it had been a while by this time since I had any pain meds so they were wearing off, and I called my mom to let her know what was going on with me, and I spent an hour on the phone in tears, until the pain subsided and then I went to sleep. I posted something on facebook about me not being well or something like that, and Katrina had asked if I needed anything and She called me, and I said I really needed her. I couldn't even stand long enough to make myself soup! And by this time I had thrown up again. So I went to sleep, and katrina gathered her stuff and her dad took her to the store and bought me soup and sprite for my upset stomach and some simple wheat bread.

I woke up and felt a little better but by now my face was about the size of a baseball. I decided to wait it out for the night and see if any of the medicine was helping. Katrina made me some soup, and I had some sprite, and we conversed a litle bit. I felt a lot better just having her there. I feel like I leave myself so alienated sometimes with my independant personality. So I let myself be taken care of for once, and it was nice. Katrina stayed up and graded some of her student's papers and I hit the hay pretty early, setting alarms for when I needed to take all of my meds. Once 4:30am rolls around, my face is even more swollen. I didn't think it could swell up anymore, and I am well aware that cheeks can get really big, but I thought I was going to have stretch marks pretty soon. So I called Gail and she took us back to the hospital around 5:30am. They got me in right away again and this time I had several people walk in and out saying "WOW! I've never seen one that huge before!". That was a confidence builder right there. So they got an IV of an anti-nausea medicine in me because I was feeling pretty nauseaus again, and then they did an IV of another kind of antibiotic because they were afraid penicillin wasn't working. They also took blood and I had to do a urine sample because they decded to to a CT scan of my head.

So after all of the IV's and crap (catheders are a disgusting thing to think about just so you know) they wheeled me off in my gurney (which was kindof fun) down the halls and through the elevator, and into the room where I was going to get my head scanned. They discovered that the swelling was much harder than expected (not much fluid) so they were checking to make sure it wasn't a tumor. More confidence building. So they injected my IV with Iodine (one of the strangest sensations ever!!) and then they put me in the big tube and scanned my head. Then I went back to my room and Katrina and I had some breakfst while we waited for the results. It was slightly amuzing for Katrina to see me shoving pea sized bites of french toast into the corner of my mouth. (She also felt sooo bad, she almost cried on many occasions). So they gave me a CD of the catscan and said that the antibiotics and Vicodin and Motrin won't do anything for the swelling because it is made up of mostly hard cells (nothing to worry about, just more of a pain in the but to get rid of) and that the only way the swelling would stop is to have my tooth pulled. So Gail came and picked us up around 10:30am or so and then we headed off to UW hospital becuase they have dentists on call on the weekends.

I got to go through the same drill there (hospital visit #3 now) and the doctor asked me some questions and said I probably wouldn't be able to do anything until Monday when the dentist offices are open, but he went to check the CT scan anyways. After checking the scan he came back and said without hesitation that he will try and have a dentist in within a half an hour. (apparently it was THAT bad). So the dentist finally came and she took a look, and then found the doctor and looked at the scan. She said it really needed to come out but they don't have the tools in the emergency room because it looked like it wasn't going to come out easy and they'd need the drills. So she called her attending and also called the oral sergeon. The oral sergeon wasn't able to make it in until 1:30pm and so she took another ex-ray of just that small area so she could see how the roots looked. That was a PAINful situation. So she did just that and when it got developed, she decided that she could possibly get it out without the drills. So she let all of her upper management know that she was just gonna go ahead with pulling the tooth because the swelling was so bad that if I had even waited a coupld of hours longer, my throat would have swollen shut and I would have pretty much died if I wasn't already at a hospital. Awesome. Also when she was describing the swelling to the attending she said "it's baseball sized...well actually a lot bigger than baseball sized." So apparently she wasn't sure if she'd be able to do it, not her specialty doing oral surgery, but she decided to do it anyways. (more confidence building). SO she put a whooole lot of numbing crap in me (it wasn't novacaine because that stuff doesn't really work on me) and then waited a bit and gave me more. The swelling was so bad that she wasn't able to numb all of me but she did the best she could and got to work. After much shoving and pulling and bloody mess, she was able to pull it out without too much pain on my behalf. Right when she got it out, the oral surgeon came in and took a look and said she did a fantastic job, and it just needed to be cleaned out a bit more to drain the infection.

This involved digging into my jaw bone where the nerves were NOT numb AT ALL, and then pushing ridiculously hard and scraping, by this time I was actually crying and screaming a little bit, uncontrollably. It HURT. But that part didn't last long, and they drained me out as much as they could and gauzed me up. The dentist gave me a "block and a half" of the numbing stuff (basically a syringe and a half), so it would last longer. And then they perscribed me a rinse and left me on my way. Gail picked us up and brought me by walgreens to get my rinse, and by this time, my tylenol from much earlier had worn off and my body was going into shock, so I started to shake from a fever and get really light headed. Katrina had gone to Starbucks to get me a modified banana chocolate blend because it's basically a meal in a cup, and it was taking forever. We met back in the car and headed home. By the time I got home I was shaking and turning blue and I got up stairs and dropped everything on the floor and went for the vicodin. I was shaking so violently that I just started to cry, and then Katrina cried and held me as I tried to fit small spoonfulls of yogurt in my mouth so my stomach wouldn't be so upset from the vicodin and I drew myself a lukewarm bath. By the time Katrina's dad got to my house to pick her up, my bath was ready and I was still shaking and crying and she was crying, and she almost didn't leave. But I told her I'd be okay once my meds kicked in and she reluctantly left. I took a very long bath and stayed in there until my fever was gone, and stayed a little longer just to relax. Then I was able to get up and stumble to my bed. I slept for a while sitting up until Mandy came home. Then she came in and saw me and almost started crying, and got upset that I didn't call her eventhough she was in Leavenworth. Aye, it's good to know I have such great friends.

So here I am at starbucks, it's almost time for me to go home and get some Vicodin and Motrin and hit the hay. My face is about a third the size it was, I'll post a pic, but I accidentally deleted the pic from yesterday when it was bigger than a baseball. Just imagine it 3 times this big, my eyes were swollen shut a bit, and I could barely open my mouth. Anyways, I can think now, and look at light and listen to music for the first time since Friday, and it is a good feeling. Crazy to know I could have died had I waited 2 hours! But I'm alive and that's what matters. Whew. That was a lot but I didn't feel like writing that fifty times as people asked me what happened.