Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Readers know I've had a stressful 18 months: family problems, a root canal that took three rounds of antibiotics to clear up, a move across the country, and a job change. My job back in Denver saw me going at ramming speed, spending two hours a day commuting, and dealing with a couple of vile coworkers. House cleaning and repairs took up my weekends and evenings for a few months, my realtor wildly overpriced my house, and I stepped on a nail a few days before I moved. I ate a lot of take-out while my house was for sale and figured I'd get back on track when I got to Indiana. It's taken five months to get back to normal. My stomach and skin were a mess from the antibiotics--I had cystic acne and just thinking about eating a lot of fat turned my stomach. I couldn't stand for long without a backache. I was so exhausted when I got here that it was a few months before I felt like working full-time again. Probiotics really helped my skin and stomach. I started taking two...

If you can sell a bag of potato chips, why can't you sell 1000mg potassium pills? I've finally found an answer to my cravings and heart palpitations, and unfortunately, it's potato chips. It's not that I've jumped on the safe starch bandwagon, it's just that it suits my current needs: I tend to get low on salt and potassium. The chips have a lot of both, making my heart and energy level feel normal. I'm too wound up about moving to be very hungry. Therefore, I can eat half a bag at a time because I'm not eating much else. I've turned into one of those people who's lost weight eating potatoes. My stomach hasn't been normal since those three courses of antibiotics from my root canal. The chips feel good on my stomach if I don't eat too many. Downsides: Acne, gas, a bit of reflux, and probably a lack of certain nutrients.  Potassium isn't one of those nutrients, though. An eight-ounce bag of potato chips has 3727 mg o...

Five years ago, I started this blog with the purpose of helping myself and others relieve pain. I've come to relieve my pain so well that I don't always know when I'm sick. I had an abscessed tooth then and I had another one a few days ago. I was in the worst pain of my life back then; this time, I couldn't quite figure out what was going on. (An important difference: the nerve in the tooth was dead this time. The tooth was knocked out of place in an accident a few years ago, and my dentist said it would probably need a root canal someday.) Still, all I had this time were signs here and there that something was wrong. After seeing my oral surgeon last Friday when my face was swollen (one of those odd signs), he referred me to an endodontist (a dentist specializing in root canals) and gave me a prescription for antibiotics. I said no thanks to pain medicine--nothing against it if you need it, but I didn't. The antibiotics perked me up so much that I did a lot of...

There's a lot of talk now about how factors besides genes and current diet affect health and weight: the health of your mother when you were a fetus, your diet as a child, stress, and environment. Another is wear and tear. A few years ago when I fell off my bike and broke a tooth and knocked two others out of place, my dentist said that the two knocked out of place would likely need a root canal someday because of the injury. It could be two weeks, it could be two years, he said. Now, nearly three years later, the canine that was injured is abscessed.  Between being lethargic (doing nothing but watching Netflix when I got home), wearing my winter coat when everyone else was in shirtsleeves, and having an odd appetite (I've been living mostly on Quest bars this past month), I should have known I was sick. But I have a high threshold of pain. Finally, my face swelled up Friday morning and I made an appointment with my oral surgeon--the one who did my dental implant and g...

Merry Christmas! In a little while, I'll be with my family, celebrating with a low-carb Christmas dinner. We'll be snacking on the low-carb goodies I made for them yesterday: low-carb chocolate peanut butter cookies, pate, roasted almonds, and some goat cheese I bought. Why low-carb? Because in the past year, cutting down on carbs has solved so many problems for me and my mother. A year ago today when I started this blog, I was eating a high-carb (~180 grams per day), low-fat, adequate protein diet. I was scheduled for a root canal. I needed acid blockers, four-hour naps every weekend, frequent meals, and visits to the chiropractor. I was also anemic and putting on weight. This, even though I ate so-called "good carbs" and worked out six days a week. In January, I cut out wheat and began slowly losing weight and feeling less bloated. In February, I cut way, way down on all carbs (to around 50 grams per day) and the fat fell off fast. My need for the naps, fre...

Monday, I was back in the dentist's chair to get a permanent filling. I told the dentist about the muscle relaxant (Cyclobenzaprine) that my TMJ doctor prescribed. It had stopped the pain in its tracks. The most helpful things I found for my tooth infection and root canal pain: Hot water bottle for pain. Cyclobenzaprine for muscle spasms and intense pain. Ibuprofin for three or four hours' moderate relief from intense pain. Probiotics (Udo's Choice Super 5 Lozenge Probiotic) for my stomach while I took cleocin (an antibiotic). The cleocin must have killed some of the good bio in my digestive system, which the probiotics helped restore.

Four days later, I got back in the dentist's chair. My gums, lymph glands and chin were swollen, even though I was taking antibiotics. "What happens if the tooth is still infected?" I asked with a pineapple-flavored swab in my mouth. "We'd do a temporary filling and let it drain, let it heal, then do a permanent filling." The dentist looked in my mouth and seemed surprised. "Amoxicillin kills 99.9% of infections." He said I needed broader spectrum antibiotic. He gave me a shot that made me numb from my front teeth to my inner ear. A few minutes later, he and his assistant started work and I squealed. "Cold," I explained. The assistant put something fibrous behind my lip and started again. It felt like they were removing tartar from the tooth next to the infected one. Awhile later, the dentist said he was done. That was it? I didn't know they'd started drilling. The assistant spent the next few minutes getting all the fiber out of ...

"Root canal" used to be a metaphor for pain. When the dentist told me last week that I had to have one (or else have the tooth pulled), I didn't know what a root canal was. I only knew that it couldn't be worse than the tooth infection that brought me to the dentist. The day before, after going to bed feeling fine, I work up with what felt like a recurrence of my TMJ problems. By mid-afternoon, I couldn't bite a sandwich without intense pain. I tried cloves, vanilla extract, ibuprofin, and acupressure, some of which brought mild relief. The next day, after examining me, the dentist pulled out his I-phone and played a computer generated video of a root canal. A tiny, flexible drill removed the affected nerve and the space left by it was filled. It seemed simple enough, but I had a few questions: ME: Can't the infection be cured with antibiotics? DR: No, the infection will go away and you'll feel better for about a month. Then it'll come back. The nerve ...