When pain pills are no longer your friends

I shall try not to exaggerate the unpleasantness of the past few days.

On Friday morning, Day 3 after chemo (Days 3 and 4 being the hardest), I realized my tooth pain had not been dealt with at the dentist’s the previous Wednesday. Pain was intense, high-pitched. I called my dentist, reminding him he needed to contact my oncologist before further action. He promptly called the Cancer Center and we waited for a return call.

Four hours of pain later, Greg is home early from work and on the phone to see what’s happening. Of course no one at the Cancer Center has yet called the dentist – and no one has bothered to let us know my oncologist was off that day. Greg is, however, put in touch with one of the oncology nurses who tells him there are no red flags on my chart and my dentist should feel free to proceed with whatever antibiotics and anesthetics he deems necessary.

Fortunately, my dentist is persistent in wanting to speak to an oncologist – and is having a concurrent conversation with the oncologist on-call – who tells him Day 3 after chemo would be the very worst time for a root canal. I should, instead, be put on antibiotics and pain pills until Tuesday. At that time I am to have a blood draw to determine if my white count is adequate for a root canal.

Late Friday afternoon, I finally begin two different antibiotics and oxycodone for pain. I am told to sip protein smoothies through a straw (these pretty much suck at room temperature which is all my tooth can tolerate) and to keep up my fluids. I have secured an appointment for a complete blood count on Tuesday.

By this time, the combination of normal chemo poopiness (fatigue, bone aches, feverishness) along with the high-pitched scream of my tooth should anything, even my tongue, come in contact with it, is truly getting me down. I want nothing more than to be slid into a soundproof tube of unconsciousness. I try to will myself into oblivion, but sound creeps in. Attempts to translate sound into what it represents is more work than I care to do, but my mind insists on translating nonetheless. When I drift into sleep, my teeth clench and I am instantly zinged to full alert. This goes on for about twelve hours.

Early Saturday I am able to get a few hours’ sleep and awake happy to hear the puppies in our neighborhood greeting each other during morning walks. I know there is hope. For several hours I am able to do some emailing, watch a movie (thanks for a good one, Ralph!) and catch up on laundry.

That’s when I start to feel nauseated. Soon I am vomiting -- room-temperature smoothies no less. Greg is on the phone with the Cancer Center again, and I am started on anti-nausea meds in order to get the pain pills and antibiotics down. When I become sleepy, Greg ingeniously presents me with a wet pad of cotton fabric to put between upper and lower teeth on the good side, so there is no possibility of contact between upper and lower teeth on the achy side. I sleep Saturday night.

Today I continue the room-temperature smoothies (smoothies are now nasty concoctions accepted only out of necessity), the wad remains to prop my teeth open, and I have given up on pain pills because they only give me bad dreams.

Greg and my brother (who missed the vomiting my mere minutes last night) tell me I now look like that “smooth, white cancer victim.” Not the emaciated kind, though – the puffy kind.

So tell me, is there another world out there somewhere?