1/6/11 - When Pain Hits

And I don't mean labor pains.  That's waaaay too far in the future for me to even be concerned about right now.

But there are constantly a lot of other pains in my life, and I have been dealing with those lately in new and uncomfortable ways because of this pregnancy.

Remember that root canal that I had back in November?  Well, for insurance reasons I had to wait until after January 1st in order for phase 2 of the root canal to be covered.  That appointment was yesterday, and for obvious reasons - even though we haven't really told many other people up to this point - I knew that I needed to tell my dentist since these root canals usually involve at least a dozen x-rays.

What I didn't know was that pregnant women also receive a different numbing agent than they usually use, one that is far less effective.

So while my lips and face were completely numb, I felt every single horrible sensation as the dentist took a drill to my gums as he drilled down my bad tooth into a nubbin. I felt blood dripping down onto my tongue and almost choked at one point (sensitive gag reflex is a definitely a symptom.)  My gums were throbbing, and they hurt sooo bad.  Tears were welling up in my eyes and he just kept saying, "Well, this is one of the problems that we experience with pregnant women."

Then came time for the x-ray.  I had done some research in advance and apparently dental x-rays - since they're so concentrated to the region above the neck - aren't really that high risk, although they should of course be avoided for any elective x-rays.  But apparently my insurance copy will deny a root canal claim if there isn't an x-ray included, so upon on the advice of my dentist I decided to go ahead and have one done (one is all the insurance really needed.) They put so many x-ray blankets on me that I felt like I was buried in sand, and that part of it was quick and easy.

Then I left.  My face was still numb which gave me a droopy expression.  I hate that.  I also had the very strong taste of blood in my mouth, and my blood basically tastes like liquid iron.  Yuck.  But on top of that, something that they used during the procedure tasted like overpowering, horrible barbeque sauce.  I'm a buffalo sauce girl, and I hate barbeque sauce so this taste was horrible for me.  I kept overproducing saliva and wanting to spit but I couldn't form my lips right because of the numbness so I just drooled into paper towels.  I also tried to swish water around in my mouth to get rid of the taste but did you know that when your face is numb you can't close your lips tight enough to form a seal?  Well you can't.  So I proceeded to fill my mouth with water and then each time I swished water gushed out of my mouth, completely out of my control.  It was horrible.

I felt sick for the rest of the day because I couldn't eat my afternoon snack, and I felt horribly queasy all afternoon, perhaps because of the pregnancy, or perhaps because of the procedure.  Who knows at this point....

Then that night it was still throbbing so bad.  All I wanted to do was take some pain pills and go to bed.  But you can't!!!  It's one of the worst things about being pregnant, especially this early on.  You're not allowed to take anything.  At all.  Because of some first trimester developing organs crap. (I kid... sort of.)  But seriously, it really sucks.  I wanted something SO bad.  I had a hard time sleeping because of this as well, and all I wanted to do was swallow a benadryl so that I could doze off.

But that was not to be. And this morning I woke up feeling exhausted because of lack of quality of sleep, and to top it all off, I had a headache.   Again, I still can't take anything, and in many ways that makes my headache worse, because I'm suddenly panicking and stressing about it.  Not good.

So now it's lunchtime, and because of the headache (or perhaps because of craving) I've already had cereal, coffee, a pack of skittles and two rice cakes, because one of the only things that sort of helps my headaches is giving into my cravings and eating what I want.  Except that all of that sugar so early in the morning made me hot and dizzy and sick to my stomach.  Or was it really just my first real bout of morning sickness?

Who knows... but what I do know for sure if that if there are more days like yesterday and today that this pregnancy thing is going to be a whole lot worse than I ever anticipated.