Wisdom Teeth Removal

[Heterodox]

So, Wednesday I went to a clinical research facility to get my 2 left Wisdom Teeth removed. We're testing investigational pain medicine after the surgery (I had to stay for 12 hours). The pay? $300.

Well the extraction was easy as hell...almost fun. I sat around for 12 hours at the hospital watching dumb movies with everyone else who was in extreme pain. Meanwhile I'm hardly feeling anything. It hurt less than when my gums around the teeth used to swell and get tender.

So I sit for 12 hours and never take a single pill...investigational or otherwise. Not so much as an ibuprofen.

I get home Wednesday night and take some pain killers I was prescribed, purely for fun. Weeeee. Wednesday and Thursday was near zero pain. I was eating cheeseburgers n' shit....always taking care to rinse my mouth lightly yet thoroughly.

So then Friday hits...and I'm having some slight jaw pain, a 100.2 fever, and it sort of hurts to swallow. By Friday night it feels like razorblades are in the back left of my throat, and pain killers are only making me feel ****ed up, rather than helping the pain. So I call the guy who yanked me teeth. He calls in a prescription to a place near me for different pain killers and some Antibiotics. Fortuneately my insurance didn't cover the antibiotics somehow...only cost me $100 dollars! YaY!

Well, last night was hell. Hardly any sleep, and never have I felt anything so painful. I took painkillers and antibiotics every 4 hours, but hardly ate anything (my jaw was so locked that I could barely slip my tongue out).

I wake up today at noon, and I literally can't see straight...I'm talking drunk ass style. I wobbled out of bed and felt sooo incredibly nauseous. Suddenly I burst into a full fledged hypoglycemic attack (caused from very low blood sugar). Well I'm so incredibly ****ed in my head from all the pills that the attack is more disorienting than normal. My world was spinning, my entire body sweating and shaking, and all the while my mouth feels like it has razorblades in it.

I managed to force feed myself an orange while nearly vomiting and holding back a panic attack (i've got about a year long history of panic attacks / anxiety problems). After 20 minutes I was stabilized (unlike my MOTU HD192 clock ) and no longer nauseated. I started getting better the rest of today (meaning it feels like there is sharp plastic when I swallow, not razors), but once again the razors are back and my jaw is so locked that I can't really eat at this point. The glands in the neck, under the side of the jaw are so incredibly swollen and tender.

I'd go to a hospital but I'm pretty sure my insurance wouldn't cover it, and when all is said and done I'd probably end up LOSING money on this whole fiasco. Damnit...and I REALLY needed that $100 anyway.

The good money says its an infection, but we'll have to wait and see.

[Brad Blackwood]

You better get to the hospital. Infections in the neck/head area get bad quickly, and you don't want that.

[Steve Smith]

ditto. Espically for a singer, not the chances to be taking.

Shit! Get some help!

Once it settles, with a thinner cheeks you will look like Johnny Depp and have to hire bodyguards to keep the women back!

Are you relaxing? Or trying to work as normal? Put your feet up. Rest watch TV, read Tape Op, even the osbcure bands recording with 4 track articles!



GET WELL SOON!

[Mario-C.]

hypoglicemic attacks are very serious stuff, not to be taken lightly, burn those $100 it will be money well spent

[cymatics]

My wife ended up with dry socket when she had hers out...

from WebMD:

"Dry socket. Dry socket is a common complication that occurs when either a blood clot has failed to form in the extracted tooth socket or else the blood clot that did form has been dislodged. Without clot formation, healing will be delayed. When it happens, dry socket typically occurs 3 or 4 days following the extraction and is accompanied by pain (ranging from "dull" to moderate to severe) and a foul mouth odor. Your dentist or oral surgeon will treat the dry socket by placing a medicated dressing in the socket. Dressing will need to be removed and replaced every 24 hours until symptoms subside."

You should have a Doc check it.

- jon

[Heterodox]

<img src="http://www.eiderdownmusic.com/Hospital1.jpg">

So here's the follow up...

The morning after last posting I awoke at 6 AM to incredible pain in my throat and jaw. I couldn't even open my mouth enough to form coherent syllables. I called the guy who yanked my teeth and he said he'd meet me at his office at 8. When I finally get in the chair he takes 5 seconds to look at me before saying something along the lines of

"I don't want to alarm you, but we need to take you to the emergency room right now - this is pretty serious and could be potentially fatal."

Huh?

So apparently I had a golf ball sized abscess growing in my lateral pharyngeal space. It was covering 80% of my airway...my uvula clinging to life on the side of my throat. I did some research and found out that the carotid sheath (which houses the carotid artery) and internal jugular vein are housed in the lateral pharyngeal space, as well as some major nerve structures. The abscess could have exploded its infection into any of these things, causing death and/or nerve damage. Could have taken another day, could have taken a week.

Either way, by noon I was in the Intensive Care Unit on a nasally inserted respirator, catheder in the big guy, morphine drip in the arm, and arms strapped down to the table. I couldn't breathe on my own, make ANY noises with my vocal chords, cough, etc. They suctioned blood and puss filled spit out of my mouth constantly, which added up in a nice big jar. I had to write on a pad of paper all of Sunday and Monday morning - which was pretty difficult with all of the tubes in my way and the morphine distorting reality. Monday morning they discontinued the morphine so I'd be fully awake and could breathe without the respirator - which they shortly after yanked out of my nose. This felt largely like someone scraping their fingernail from the back of the throat all the way out the nose...and yielded a comparable amount of blood - which didn't stop dripping from my nose the entire day.

They were supposed to move me out of ICU on Monday morning but didn't get around to it until midnight. All through the day I was ignored by nurses. One nurse left me alone, standing, after I stood up for the FIRST time - bed unmade, cables connected to me everywhere... She didn't come back for 45 minutes.

Then monday night they felt the need to check my vitals every 10 minutes. Serious communication problems... And they hooked me up to a faulty oxygen saturation measurement machine thingy (the oxometer thing they put on your finger). It beeped insanely all night and they kept coming in to fix it. Finally after I pleaded that I wouldn't stop breathing if they'd just ****ing let me sleep, they took it off completely.

Tuesday I left at about 2 PM.

Most of the hospital visit was hell because of a huge amount of fatuousness on the nurses' parts. I mean, half of the nurses had NO IDEA WHY I WAS THERE, or what I had been through. Um...read my goddamned chart please? NO I CANT ****ING EAT FROSTED FLAKES AND TURKEY SANDWHICHES, THEY JUST LANCED MY THROAT!

AAAAAARRRRGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!

Oh, and to top it off, they installed a pinwheel drain in my throat. Now God knows why they call it a pinwheel...its actually a 3 inch long rubber tube - and they had it implanted into my throat wall, down to the last centimeter. On Monday evening the drain got screwed up when I was eating and ended up hanging out halfway. This resulted in a stabbing feeling every time I swallowed, and I could feel the leverage of the drain while just breathing. The Doctor saw it Tuesday and decided to leave it in until monday...which resulted in an incredibly unpleasant first day home.

The swelling is almost all gone now, the pain is very minimal, and I think its pretty much over with - though the doctor said there is a very very slight chance it could return because they couldn't possibly track down all of the pockets of infection.

After all was said and done, we have a 10k+ bill (without surgery or anesthetic charges, which should make it easily 20-25k). My parents both are self employed, and that means horrible insurance. We pay a $1000 deductable and insurance will cover 80% of the remainder. So we're looking at anywhere from 3-5k in expenses for a freak complication. This totally ruins the gear purchase plan I was following quite nicely.

I go in to a clinical study to make $300 and lose $5,000.

W h a t T h e F u c k

<img src="http://www.eiderdownmusic.com/Hospital2.jpg">

[littledog]

Man, what a ****ing nightmare!

Just focus on getting healthy and don't worry about the 5 grand or whatever you're in the hole. "It's only money" sounds pretty stupid, but it's true. There are a million ways you can find yourself with an unexpected $5000 expense - your furnace could die, loss of work for a couple of months, total your car, etc.

The main thing is, you can always make the money back, given time. It sucks not to be able to buy gear, but you'll get it eventually. Everything else pales besides your health.

You may want to consider whether the clinic that performed the initial surgery has any responsibility for your resulting condition. I'm not a big fan of malpractice attourneys, as they drive up everyone's medical expenses, but you might have a legitimate case. Might be worth talking to someone.

[Brad Blackwood]

Glad you're OK - an infection like this was what I was worried about in my above post. They are very dangerous in this part of the body...

As LD said above - it is only money. It sucks right now, but this kind of thing happens somewhat commonly with major oral surgery.

Just be glad you are alive. We are.

[Steve Smith]

totally. get healthy dude, and remember that every dime you make from now on would not have happened if you hadn't had that medical bill... glad to hear you are on the mend!

[cymatics]

I couldn't help but think of Monozine

I hope you have a speedy recovery.

- jon

[BevvyB]

You could have died dude

You didn't.

Enjoy your debt! It was worth it. Sometimes there's no alternative.

Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives

Go out and do some living! Try and think of it as inspiration.

And when you're able to eat without going 'Ow' that food is going to taste soooo good..

[psytechguy]

Originally posted by littledog
Man, what a ****ing nightmare!

You may want to consider whether the clinic that performed the initial surgery has any responsibility for your resulting condition. I'm not a big fan of malpractice attourneys, as they drive up everyone's medical expenses, but you might have a legitimate case. Might be worth talking to someone.

These places that run clinical trials typically have you sign off that you will hold them harmless in the event of any complications. You're basically volunteering to be a paid guinea pig.

In the 80's there were lot's of struggling musicians down here (Austin) that would do this occasionally for $'s. There was a place called Pharmaco that you'd check into for a week or so and they'd dose you with some new drug that was on trial. Then they'd come around once an hour or so and draw blood so they could determine the drug's half life, etc.

Just one step up from selling plasma at the blood bank down on The Drag.

[Heterodox]

Yeah I had too high of a bilirubin count to participate in most Pharmaco studies. About 6 months ago I was trying to get into a 10 day, inpatient study that was testing insomnia medicine. $2500 dollars to sit around taking sleepytime pills. I dunno what this "back in the 80's" stuff is...there's still plenty of struggling musicians who write "Pharmaco guinea pig" as their current job. =]

Anyhow thanks for all the uplifting words and whatnot. I know money isn't THAT big of a deal...I'm just a very impatient person, and I've been trying to get a decent studio going for so long. Lack of knowledge held me back before, and now its turning into lack of a good financial situation.

I am looking at it as positive though. Once you get out of a traumatic experience you get to reevaluate life. At least ONE good thing is that I was forced to quit smoking for about 2 weeks...which I'm using as a springboard to quit altogether. I've quit multiple times before, for periods of up to a month or so, but this time I'm aiming for much longer. Being sick and forced to stop kinda took the edge off the first couple of weeks. But DAMN...I NEED A CIGARETTE!

[psytechguy]

Originally posted by Heterodox
I dunno what this "back in the 80's" stuff is...there's still plenty of struggling musicians who write "Pharmaco guinea pig" as their current job. =]

"back in the 80's" means that I remember that shit from "back in the 80's." That's when I was struggling to play and pay rent and that's when my crowd was into that sort of thing. Hell, I wasn't even aware Pharmaco still existed!

One of the best guitarists I ever knew split his time between stays at Pharmaco, where he'd do nothing but practice guitar, and resort gigs down in Mexico.


No disrespect to the Pharmaco guinea pigs of the world. I've done crazier things to generate money (anyone need a kidney? It's only had 10-12 tank cars of beer run through it, nice and flushed out. $50,000)



I guess I'm at the age where I'm turning into my father. You know, the "Why I remember back in '64 when gas was .20 a gallon!" syndrome

....sad part is, I DO remember back then!

"yessir, I recollect back in tha Blizzard of '83, we couldn't even shovel ourselves out of Pharmaco. Had to stay there till help arrived. Amused ourselves by trying out different "medications!"

[rasaban]

Heterodox,
God bless you. You are one lucky dude. and I 'm sure you're glad to be in the land of the living, You''ll get all that stuff soon ..... Not to worry

Manifset
peace and prosprity

Rasaban

BTW I 'm tryin to expand my studio and will not be going in for any test trials.

Take care of yourself

Rasaban

[plexi]

Glad everything turned out ok!

Here in Norway that whole scenario would have costed $0!!!!

We pay a lot of taxes, but at least getting sick is free......

Amund

[Heterodox]

Yeah...it sickens me that my tax dollars pay for cops to sit around and write tickets for speeders, arrest kids smoking pot, and arrest underage drinkers. Lets not forget paying for their incarceration, 3 meals a day, a place to sleep...

But hospitals...they're like a ****ing McDonalds.

"I'll have the Big Mac and respirator please."

"That'll be 2500 dollars. Thank you, drive through."

Holey moley!



Short of a photo of someone in a pine box it couldn't have gotten any worse for a fellow Gearslut!

What an incredible story! Your documentation of it is an inspiration!

And what GREAT news you are better!



We all wish you a full & speedy recovery!

An encouragement to keep off the ciggarettes!

[3578fal]

Could you give me the name and or number to the place where you got your wisdom teeth removed?

Thanks

[olivia_nb]

Originally Posted by 3578fal

Could you give me the name and or number to the place where you got your wisdom teeth removed?

Thanks

Most random first post ever!

[bcgood]

Originally Posted by olivia_nb

Most random first post ever!

Not to mention reviving a thread from the dead!

[grantlandau]

man this really is good news

[KEN1]

Originally Posted by 3578fal

Could you give me the name and or number to the place where you got your wisdom teeth removed?

Thanks

That was 5 years ago you a$$wipe!

[audiovisceral]

Originally Posted by Heterodox

I was eating cheeseburgers n' shit....

and that was probably the mistake. ouch though.

edit: lmao! 5 year old thread.. wtf??