Bacteria – Part 2

I thought a bit about whether to put my medical troubles onto the blog or not, but decided to do so. First of all as a chronicle of what happened for myself, second as kind of a case study, which might one day help someone with similar problems.
It’s also a “study” of actually wanting to get into a hospital and finding it difficult to be admitted. I kind of wanted to be admitted around 36 to 48 hours before I eventually got hospitalized.

My just recently reported bacteria story took an unexpected turn for the much worse.
Mid of February the front pillar of that old tooth bridge (see previous blog entry from 23feb20) was starting to act up, hurt when eating and felt generally weird and appeared even a bit loose. I asked the dentist, he wriggled around at the tooth and said hm, let’s see for another week how it behaves. Fine by me, since he was working on the other pillar of the former bridge. In dentist terms he was doing the root canal cleaning on tooth 7. Number six got pulled maybe 25 years ago. So what was starting to trouble me now was number 5.

24th February:
Number 5 started to hurt massively and the tissue around it swelled a bit. Chewing on the right side became nearly impossible.

25th February:
I called the dentist in the morning, he agreed to see me more or less during his lunch time. He took an X-ray. Same story as with number 7. At the top of the root is a pocket with bacteria, bad news, also at tip of tooth 4. Number 4 is an old crown with former root canal action, but number 5 is/was the only molar tooth on the upper right side left with a living nerve. He drilled it open and pulled the nerve, having to give me five (!) dosages of anesthetics because it hurt like hell. He stuffed medicine into the root canal and closed the tooth and sent me home.
The tooth hurt more and more during the afternoon and the face started to swell. In the evening my boss said I look cute with the fattened cheek (friendly meant joke, I laughed at it). Back home it got worse and worse and even touching the area with the tongue hurt, any form of pressure was excruciating. I took the regular one pill a day antibiotics prescribed by the ENT doc and some pain meds from the dentist which helped zero. I couldn’t sleep from the pain and it swelled more and more. At 3 in the morning I freaked out and called the medial emergency hotline. That’s a pretty cool hotline, where someone listens to your story and gives you advise and judges whether to call an ambulance or not. I told my story and the advisor guy recommended to send over an ambulance and connected me to them. For the first time in my life I had thus called an ambulance. They came ten minutes later and looked at my swollen face, checked temperature, blood pressure, listened to the story. The emergency doctor said, that at this hour the next dentist is about an hour drive away and I probably have to wait there too and that dentist will probably only give me stronger meds and that’s it. They can take me there all right, but if I can stand it somehow I should wait till the morning and go to my regular dentist. The prospect of an hour in a car and all that let me decide to hold out until morning. I asked the guy what it cost that they came to my place. Oh, the ambulance doesn’t cost anything. I was starting to get back some of the health insurance I’m paying. I dozed off at about 5:30 in the morning for maybe an hour, that was it.

26th February:
I went to my dentist without an appointment and stood at his door when he opened, my face looked interesting by now. Dentist said he cannot drill around anywhere if it’s that swollen and slabbed stronger pain meds and antibiotics into my hand. Hm… I went back home and did some home office, several phone calls with Germany, while feeling worse and worse. The new pain meds helped for about an hour but that was it and I was only allowed to take three pills a day. At 17:00 I called the dentist again, asking what to do, whether he can’t submit me to a hospital, he says he can’t, I should check with my ENT. I called the ENT and he ordered me to his practice, so I’m on the train for the second time that day despite feeling terrible. He said, okay, forget the dentist’s antibiotics, take yet other stuff that’s stronger. Not being able to sleep is no surprise, I have to be patient. It’s already 18:30 in the evening, if the yet new antibiotics work, fine, if not I should prepare to be hospitalized on Thursday. During the night fever started, I dozed on an off but got up hourly to change ice packs, the only thing that kept me from freaking out. By morning my eye had swollen shut. ENT warned that this could happen, so I was prepared and didn’t freak out over it. Fever was at 38 Celsius.

27th February:
First thing in the morning was to call the ENT and he said to come over and he’ll decide whether to send me to hospital or not, which is likely and I shall prepare and bring stuff. I rode on the train hiding behind mask and sunglasses. ENT took one look into my face and said, he’ll write a recommendation letter and sent me with it to the Showa University hospital Yokohama branch, which is luckily in walking distance from the ENT. I staggered to hospital seeing only from one eye. Luckily I didn’t have to do initial explaining anywhere, I just removed the mask and showed them my face and everyone went OMG…